SUN SET

What came first—the end of summer or the playlist that mourns it before it's even gone? You're three weeks into August and already nostalgic for July. That's the problem with summer: you spend half of it anticipating the end, cataloging moments like they're B-sides you'll never find again.

This playlist opens with Sublime's "Garden Grove," which is the correct choice, obviously. Bradley Nowell recorded everything on the self-titled album knowing he was dying—Lou Dog's in the liner notes, and Nowell's gone two months after release in '96. You can hear it in the acoustic intro, that California sunset melancholy before the distortion kicks in. I'm running the Lakefront Trail at 7pm on a Thursday, stealing forty minutes between the record store and whatever passes for dinner, and this track makes me think about borrowed time. Summer's always borrowed time.

The Elovaters and Dirty Heads dominate the middle stretch, and here's where I get defensive about taste. Reggae rock gets dismissed as frat-boy beach music, but listen to what's actually happening: "Sunburn" and "Let It All Out" are about seasonal romance, the kind that expires with the beach pass. These aren't stupid songs. They're songs about KNOWING something's temporary and doing it anyway. "Lay Me Down" with Rome—that's Sublime's Rome Ramirez, which feels like inheritance—drops at the playlist's exact center. You're halfway through the run, halfway through summer, halfway through convincing yourself that this time it'll be different.

Top 5 Reasons Summer Romance and Ska-Punk Share DNA:

1. Both peak early and fast—upstrokes and first dates, all adrenaline and optimism before reality's second verse.

2. The skanking rhythm literally mimics infatuation: offbeat, breathless, unsustainable for more than three minutes or three months.

3. Horn sections arrive like emotional clarity—sudden, bright, overpowering—then vanish before you can hold them.

4. Both get dismissed as lightweight until you're alone in September realizing the levity WAS the point, not a bug.

5. Sublime, The Elovaters, Dirty Heads—every track here is about beautiful things ending, but the tempo won't let you mourn yet. That's summer. That's ska.

"Sirens" with Dirty Heads around mile four hits different when you're sweating through a Chicago heat wave that won't break. The production's got that modern reggae-rock polish—probably recorded at some Southern California studio with ocean-view windows—but underneath it's the same truth Sublime knew in '96: party music for people who understand parties end. I've been that person. You dance BECAUSE it ends, not despite it.

The back half shifts. "Optimism in F#" is an instrumental—rare on running playlists—and it's like the playlist itself is catching its breath before the goodbye section. "All Her Favorite Songs" title alone is a gut-punch. It doesn't matter that it's probably about summer festival hookups; when you're running alone at dusk, it becomes about whoever's favorite songs you still remember. I remember. That's the problem.

By "First Light" and "Goodbyes," you're in the cooldown, that liminal space where the run's ending but you're not ready to be done. These tracks sound like September even though it's still August. The playlist doesn't crescendo; it drifts, which is braver. "Sloth's Revenge" closes it out—I don't even know if that's Sublime or a deep cut I should recognize, but it doesn't matter. The title says it all: slow down, the season's over, you knew this was coming.

Here's what this playlist understands that most summer anthems don't: nostalgia isn't what you feel after something ends. It's what you feel WHILE it's still happening, knowing the end is written into the opening chords. Ska-punk's offbeat rhythm is literally counting down—one-and, two-and, three-and—every upstroke a tick toward autumn.

I finish the run. Summer's not over yet. But I'm already making the mixtape for the person I was in June, hoping she'll understand why this mattered. She won't. Neither will September. But you press play anyway, steal another forty minutes from the dwindling season, and run toward the water like borrowed time doesn't count against you. It always does. The music never lies about that.