Last week, Billboard.com posted its Top 30 Summer Songs of All Time, a tally based on chart performance. Though I can’t fathom how “Vacation” by The Go-Go’s was overlooked, the entries are much better than what made Sirius XM’s “Sounds LIke Summer” countdown that aired on its Big ’80s channel over Memorial Day Weekend. That mostly laughable list included Phil Collins’ “Another Day In Paradise,” because nothing gets your backyard barbecue going like a plodding song about homelessness. (Gotta love the voting public, who obviously selected songs based on summer-themed keywords.)

But back to Billboard. “Suddenly Last Summer” by The Motels landed in the lower third of the list at #24, a tune from 1983 that captures the season’s fleeting feeling so very well. What seems a bit curious today is that the Berkeley, California group actually released the single in September. It spent two weeks at #1 on the Rock chart the following month, and peaked at #9 on the Hot 100 in late November, timing that made the titular ‘last summer’ quite recent indeed.

The video for “Suddenly Last Summer” involves an ice-cream truck, a Harlequin romance novel (Building Passion), and a group of creepy adults standing at the foot of a teen girl’s bed. Singer Martha Davis also gets horizontal with a handsome-for-the-Eighties guy, but there’s no lip-syncing in this clip, a choice which seems unusual for the time.

Anyway, I could still listen to Davis sing this all summer long. At the very least, this tune will be in my head (and yours) all day. Hear here:

Purchase The Motels – “Suddenly Last Summer” via iTunes, Amazon MP3.