The Last Laps of Summer with Loudon Wainwright III’s Classic, “The Swimming Song”

I was obsessed with the banjo when I was in high school. Not playing it. Not attempting to learn how to play it. Not even the way in which it looked (even though it did look really cool and complicated. It was one of those instruments that looked smarter than you.) No, it was the way it sounded and the way it felt deep in my Midwestern heart. I was intensely into Mumford & Sons along with other folk and Americana artists throughout middle school and into my junior year. I was immediately won over by any song that had a banjo featured. I would thrash my head around as if I was at a metal concert whenever one would unleash itself. 

My love for the banjo has waned. The deep-rooted appreciation wasn’t gone. It would forever be there, but it has grown dormant after my discovery of indie rock and more alternative music. After I discovered Vampire Weekend, my unadulterated love for the banjo dissolved like a Kool-Aid packet in a large pitcher of water— the intensity was just diluted. 

I had almost completely forgotten about such a phase until I heard a magnificent song on an Instagram story (new to me, it was released in the 70s to the general public.) Loudon Wainwright III's, "The Swimming Song". As soon as I heard it, I felt the pangs again. The same reverberation that I felt during Mumford & Sons’ major sing-along, "Little Lion Man", rushed back to me. I felt the immediate out-of-body urge to stomp my feet and wave my hands in the air along with each banjo riff. 

I wished I had discovered “The Swimming Song” sooner. I stumbled upon it in late August. It was the perfect summer song with its subject matter, imagery and a touch of melancholy. I didn’t know how this song has skirted past my ears thus far, especially since I’ve heard other Loudon Wainwright III songs, but alas until last week, it was not a part of my life. 

The song was incredibly whimsical, almost on the verge of being cheesy. If it weren’t for some surprising moments of reality, the song wouldn’t ring true. They enveloped it in the weird semi-sad phenomena that was summer; it was finite and had rainy days, and there was still enough time for less-than-ideal events to transpire. Summer could smother you with boredom and some of the best days of your life, it was rather contradictory wasn’t it?

The song clocks in at just two minutes and twenty-seven seconds. It flies by, not too unlike the summertime months from my own childhood growing up in Michigan. It’s a simple song, just about him swimming and all of the different kinds of strokes and locations of his activities. Such things include the breaststroke, cannonballs and the old Australian crawl (which interestingly isn’t recognized by FINA, the federation that overlooks the rulings of water sports for the Olympics and other major international competitions.) The song acts as a list, a quick summary of the days he spent outside in the water, the other details of those days are left out, they aren’t important.

However, there are two lines that stand out with their break from the lightness of the rest of the song. The first of which comes in the second verse of the song, “Salt my wounds, chlorine my eyes / I’m a self-destructive fool”. It’s a brash and self-reflective glimmer in a pretty easy-going and harmless song. It’s the only peek that we get of the protagonist and the way he lives his life. With all of these fun moments, they might not be truly good for him. It’s a raw moment in which he reflects on his physicality and the fact that he isn’t always kind to it.

“And once when you weren’t looking / I did a cannonball.” The second includes one of two moments where a ‘you’ is addressed. He’s not alone in these voyages (or at least not for all of them.) That particular scene is linked to the previous one. There’s a sense of recklessness underneath this all, whether it be childish, as in the ‘you’ is his mother and he’s doing cannonballs after she persistently told him not to. Or, it might have been a significant other later in life, and when they aren’t looking, left to his own devices, he screws everything up. Either way, he didn’t always think of the consequences of things, just like how most children and adolescents are, and this is how they should be. 

The song is from 1973, and it does feel dated. This song wouldn’t be a hit, but that’s okay. It feels like an old water-damaged photo of your parents from a time before you knew them, when your dad shockingly has a mustache and your mom has giant glasses that she would never wear today. It embraces the free-flowing carelessness of summertime, even 40 years later. Kids and people will always swim, and you’ll always get chlorine in your eyes, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.