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The 13th
Artist: The Cure
Album: Wild Mood Swings
Year: 1996
♥: For the first time in our twenty-six weeks (!) of 5pm_weds, I didn't even have to think about this week's choice. There is only one song in my entire catalogue that definitively defines "Heat" for me -- and it is, of course, 'The 13th.'

I beyond love The Cure, of course -- they've got great goth cred, so of course I loved them in my swirly-black-eyeliner days; they're amazing in general, so I now adore them independently of their reputation (plus, Robert Smith is a machine -- I've seen them live twice, and both times they played three-hour sets!). However, they also have the distinction of having the only album I actually brought downtown with me from my BMG Music-by-Mail days -- a greatest hits album I ordered simply because I liked "Friday I'm in Love." At thirteen, I listened to the rest of the album unimpressed. At fifteen, I tried again -- and one of the first songs I really loved was this one.

All I can picture when I hear this song is a the beginning of a party somewhere in Mexico, maybe 7pm, the end of an unbelievably hot day. People mingling, drinks beginning to flow, the sun setting, heat waves swirling up from pavement and gravel. A couple slinking around to this song, grinning -- a lot of fragmented images, all coming together to create A Summer Evening.

I can't sit still when I listen to this song -- you have to dance, especially at the chorus (I defy you to not shake your hands and/or hips to the "do-it-to-me-do-it-to-me-do-it-to-me"s!). The horns section in this song kills me, as does the percussion, and of course the lyrics.
"If you want I can take you on another kind of ride." / "Believe me I would but..." / Deep inside, the 'but' is 'please' / I am yearning for another taste / And my shaking is 'yes' ---------- I love how hazy and confused everything gets (Am I seducing or being seduced?): so exemplary of a heat wave, how everything is muddled and nothing quite makes sense, the world is too sticky to be real and you're never quite sure what's hallucination or reality. Boundaries fall.

I return to this song every summer, and I'm never sure if my blaring it is caused by the heat -- or vice versa. It's just that evocative; it's just that good.