SUMMER C Releases Debut Album The Age of Summer
London-based trans artist Summer C shares her debut album The Age of Summer, three years in the making, on 19th August, and shares breezy new track ‘Bad Choices’. Produced by Jamie Sellers (Elton John, Ed Sheeran, FLO, Little Simz) and Annie Rew Shaw, ‘Bad Choices’ is a sun-soaked, easy-breezy pop moment – the sound of a lazy afternoon, with nowhere to be and no one to answer to.
Where ‘My Quiet Kind of Brave’ mapped the quiet strength of survival, ‘Bad Choices’ is Summer at her most playful – young, sun-drunk, and entirely unbothered, transporting listeners to easier, chiller times. It’s a track built for daydreaming on the couch with the day wide open, over a bright, unhurried groove that never asks permission. As she puts it: “let’s celebrate all the bad choices we’ll make”. She elaborates, “I decided it was time to break out of the mould of what I was taught and make a few bad choices that led to many memorable experiences”.
The Age of Summer is a 13 track record that plays out like a diary left open: the crushes, the heartbreaks, the wrong turns, and the moments of pure joy that add up to becoming yourself. It opens with the first of three intimate, interview-style interludes threaded through the album – conversations between Summer and an interviewer that give the listener an insight into who Summer really is, before ‘Part Of Me’ arrives in a burst of pop-tinged brightness and brass, all celebrity-crush fantasy and youthful longing. ‘All We Could Be’ follows as a soaring, ballad-esque moment full of promise and wide-eyed anticipation, before ‘Your Eyes Tell Me’ turns inward with a reflective meditation on heartbreak.
A second interlude leads into ‘Worst Version of Myself’, the emotional centre of the record – the most heart-wrenching and brutally honest song Summer has ever released, built on haunting, layered vocals that lay bare her darkest days and mental health struggles. ‘Mirages’ answers with defiance, a track that builds into larger than life, driving drums, before ‘My Quiet Kind of Brave’ returns as the album’s gutsy, hope-and-self-belief anthem. A third and final interlude gives way to ‘Bad Choices’, ‘Abide’ – a sultry, smooth R&B turn wondering aloud whether a relationship will last the distance – and ’14th of September (every time)’, a piano ballad full of magic, wonder and wishful thinking. The record closes on ‘Masterpiece’, a bouncy and joyful send-off.
Summer speaks on the album: “A lot of this album comes from what I wished people really knew about me. Growing up, I spent a lot of time hiding parts of myself because I didn’t grow up in an accepting environment. This album is about celebrating all of that, the highs and the lows. I approached writing it with honesty as my guide. My hope is that listeners come away with a sense of the teenage girl I was, the woman I was slowly emerging as, and laugh at the shared experiences, feel the joy, heartache, and energy of the songs while connecting to them on a personal level”.