The Boys of Summer has some of the best lyrics of any song I know. The way he tells this girl that his love will outlast the other boys by comparing it to a tourist town long after the season is over is just genius, and it really paints a vivid picture in my mind like few other songs can.
You summed that up PERFECTLY. That is exactly how. ‘The Boys of Summer’ sounds to my ear, too.
Don Henley never wrote a bad song in his LIFE. So many of his songs resonate with me. And, he writes the BEST break up songs, EVER! :)
1. The awesome, creative lyrics, as you described. Even better is the line about the "Deadhead sticker on a Cadillac." He later described that as the moment he suddenly became disenchanted with everything the 60s stood for ... when he saw some rich dude driving a Cadillac in Beverly Hills with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker on it. The image of it spoke of a former hippie who had sold out and adopted the bourgeois lifestyle they always hated.
2. I don't even like music videos, but that one has some great elements: the black & white theme, the beach scenes, the kid playing the drums (it's supposed to be him as a kid), and the segments filmed with him standing in the back of the car.
3. The song has a great history. A version of it was originally written for Tom Petty to include on his "Southern Accents" album, but Petty decided it didn't fit with the rest of the songs they had lined up, so he let the writer use it for something else.
4. Awesome, awesome short little guitar riffs -- or even single notes -- throughout.
The Boys of Summer is my favorite Don Henley song of all time. Thanks for calling it to my mind!