Arts Column: It’s the time of the season to switch up playlists

There’s a lot to love about March. First of all, it’s when Uranus was discovered. And it’s got St. Patrick’s Day, which thankfully you don’t have to be Irish to celebrate, you just have to wear catchy t-shirts with slogans like “Kiss Me I’m Drunk,” the way St. Patrick intended it.\nMy favorite day in March, however, is always the one that finally feels like spring – the one you’ve been waiting for, where you walk outside and everything smells like Downy. And so everyone puts on shorts and a tank top and realizes after they’ve left the house that it’s not actually warm, it’s just warmer. And then they freeze their asses off, but grin and bear it because it’s finally spring, damn it, and they’re going to play cornhole if it kills them.\nSo what did I do last Friday? I under-dressed and froze my ass off with the rest. \nBut I also had to make a new playlist – it was finally feeling like spring and, just like my wardrobe, my music tastes had to foray into summer. \nPardon the pun, but people’s dispositions are sunnier in the summer, and perhaps their music should be, too. \nThere’s a reason why songs about winter seem to have sluggish lyrics about long Decembers and dark undertones of reclusiveness (like Boo Radley’s iPod). Who wants to be weighed down by depressing lyrics sung by someone with Seasonal Affective Disorder? Although there are certainly tons of artists who deserve to stick around all year, some of the heavier tunes need to be stripped, along with the bikini area.\nFiona Apple is the perfect example of this. There’s something about her writhing around on a green shag carpet looking like an advertisement for bulimia that doesn’t scream “Let’s run to Jiffy Treat!” to me. She is a strictly winter artist, so I had to throw her out with the other downers for the time being.\nBecause, as DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince famously sung in the cinematic masterpiece “Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style” “summer, summer, summertime ... time to sit back and unwind.” \nMy summer style involves a lot more electronica and hip-hop and a lot less indie. It is, in fact, a lot more unwound than my winter selections. Basically, if I can rock out to it in a top-down convertible, it’s my summer style. I don’t own a convertible, but if I did, I sure as hell wouldn’t be blaring Counting Crows from it. \nI suppose everyone’s summer style varies, though. Maybe yours is the opposite, who knows? Maybe you’ve never seen Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style. (No one knows the true feeling of summer until they’ve seen Kelly Kapowski in a bikini.)\nRegardless, I think it’s important to have a rotating music collection – if your song choices better reflect your mood, the music just sounds better. I’m sure this is debatable, but there’s something to be said about hearing the right song at the right time – like when Kelly Clarkson’s “Miss Independent” comes on the radio right after a break-up and you sing along loud enough for him to hear in another zip code.\nJust ask my roommate.