Throw open the windows, kick off your shoes and mix yourself an ice-cold cocktail . . . producers, pundits and pop stars reveal the secret to a great holiday single

What makes a song perfect for the summer? Britain’s first No 1 holiday hit was Jerry Keller’s Here Comes Summer. Topping the charts in 1959, it celebrated teenage innocence and escape: “School is out, oh happy day/ Here comes summer/ I’m going to grab my girl and run away.” Strangely, the American’s song reached the top spot in the UK in the rather unseasonal month of October, but perhaps this shows us that some summer singles are more about dreams than sweaty, sunburnt reality. This year, the big hit is expected to be Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris’s imminent Holiday, a dancefloor-stormer about the typical British experience abroad, featuring the lines: “Don’t judge my passport photo/ I know I look a bit loco.”

From the Beach Boys going surfin’ USA, to the Kinks lazing on a sunny afternoon, from Grease’s summer lovers to the Isley Brothers’ summer breeze, summer pop has always been about escape – and, for buttoned-up Brits, mainly about having a party, a singalong and buckets of booze. Mungo Jerry’s In the Summertime, the first No 1 summer song from a British artist, directed us in 1970 to “have a drink, have a drive”, before sensibly suggesting that we should “signal a cab” and bring our “bottle waggin’ back”.

And then a decade later came the daddy of them all, Wham!’s Club Tropicana, which took us to a sunshine wonderland where the drinks were free. George Michael tipping his cherry-red cocktail into a sky-blue pool became the ultimate expression of that decade’s cheesy decadence.

There’s also the summer novelty song. Evidence that we all go a little daft in the sunshine, the phenomenon was kick-started by Barbados in 1975, a song by a band called Typically Tropical about the delights of Coconut Airways (can you see a theme here?). It was reworked by the Vengaboys for their 1999 hit, We’re Going to Ibiza.

How do you cook up a summer hit – and is it easy as it sounds? We asked a producer, a pundit, a radio boss and musicians from pop’s past and present to tell us what gets them in the holiday mood . . .

The chart-topper

Elly Jackson, singer in La Roux

Our song Bulletproof has sort of become a summer song. I don’t really know why. We did write it in the summer, though. I think sunny weather drives you towards certain tempos and melodies that work well booming out of open windows. It’s a fairly aggressive song in terms of its mood and character, though, whereas lots of summer songs tend to be light and flippant, like Club Tropicana.

We demanded that our next single, I’m Not Your Toy, came out in summer for that reason. It has a brightness that wouldn’t work in winter. I always remember Toploader’s Dancing in the Moonlight coming out early in the year when it was cold and raining. How stupid.

Favourite summer song: Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue. It reminds me of summers growing up in Brixton. Reggae always works at this time of year. But then again, any music made somewhere sunnier than Britain usually does.

The music mogul

Pete Waterman, producer, songwriter and Pop Idol judge

Summer songs became big in the 1950s and 60s, when people started to holiday abroad and hear the music there. Spain is much sexier than Clacton! That’s why Sylvia Vrethammar’s Y Viva Espana became a big hit in the autumn of 1974. Everyone came back from their package holidays and got misty-eyed.

Summer hits are as much about image and the way people perceive pop stars as anything else. Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan helped [my production company] Stock, Aitken and Waterman have hits with The Loco-Motion and Sealed With a Kiss because they were from Australia, a country everyone thought of as permanently sunny.

It’s also a time when the fewest records are bought, so we took full advantage of that: it was easier to get a No 1 in those months. It’s a shame there are fewer novelty singles these days. Record companies are obsessed with sophistication and coolness, which is bloody rubbish. It’s not as if novelty singles don’t work. Tom Hark by the Piranhas [a cover of a South African kwela song] was a summer hit in 1980. It’s still played in at football matches. Summer should be about having a laugh.

Favourite summer song: Carole King’s It Might As Well Rain Until September. It reminds me of when I was a 15-year-old lad, fancying a girl and dreaming his holidays away. The best summer songs play on that, especially if they focus on unrequited love. Everyone’s favourite summer songs come from that time in their lives.

The radio boss

George Ergatoudis, Radio 1′s head of music

Songs that get people dancing are held back for the summer by record labels. I don’t blame them. Listeners respond to dance music when it’s warm. We’re loving Dizzee Rascal’s Holiday and Mini Viva’s Left My Heart in Tokyo now. They have that poppy-trance sound that works at the moment, perhaps because it echoes early-90s rave culture, which people associate with being outside and having a good time.

We like to play mood-changers on Radio 1 in the summer, to promote euphoria and good sensations, and take you away from your desk or your car. There’s no rules as to how that works. In radio, you just learn to feel it: a raw, primitive, irresistible connection of music to the emotions.

Favourite summer song: Madonna’s Into the Groove or Snap!’s Rhythm Is a Dancer. Brilliant pop that sounds great coming out of car speakers.

The pundit

Peter Robinson, editor of Popjustice.com

People relax. Knobbly knees and love handles appear. And musical tastes relax, too. I don’t mean standards slip. I mean people stop trying to cover up the fact that they like simple pop music. Pretending you don’t like music with a very catchy tune is tiring, so people take the summer off.

Songs aiming for big summer status appear in our office every year., It’s like press release bingo. Claims of “sun-kissed vocals” and “lilting Beach Boys harmonies” usually mean they sound a bit bouncy and there’s a reference to sunshine in the second verse. Then again, being able to launch someone like Lily Allen off the back of a summer single is a good marketing strategy. That’s what happened with Smile in 2006. Lily’s label is trying it again this year with MPHO’s Box N Locks. To ram the point home, it features a very beachy Martha and the Muffins sample.

Favourite summer song: La Isla Bonita by Madonna, even though it was released in April. It must have been a warm spring. At the moment, though, nothing beats Dizzee Rascal’s Holiday. It’s a Club Tropicana for 2009. And like the best summer holidays, it ends with a massive rave-up.

The 80s star

Sara Dallin, singer and songwriter in Bananarama

The best summer songs remind you of your youth: what you did in your holidays, how it felt when you first kissed a boy, going away without your parents. For me, our hit, Cruel Summer, played on the darker side: it looked at the oppressive heat, the misery of wanting to be with someone as the summer ticked by. We’ve all been there!

It was a huge hit in the US. I’ll always remember coming out of our hotel in LA when we first became famous and seeing Mike Tyson sitting there. He burst into Cruel Summer when he saw us. It was unbelievable. Summer songs do that to people. When the sun’s out, anything goes.

Favourite summer song: Anything by Blondie or Roxy Music because of their sound. They were glamorous, and they take me back to those teenage summers when anything was possible.

Five ingredients for a guaranteed summer smash

• Any instrument that comes from outside the British Isles. Bonus points for Spanish guitars (the Spice Girls’ Viva Forever, Madonna’s La Isla Bonita), marimbas (Bananarama’s Cruel Summer), calypso rhythms and Brazilian samba beats. Note: bagpipes and Welsh harps do not get the pavements sizzling.

• A video that clearly costs a great deal of money and has to be watched through sunglasses. Ideally, it will feature a beach, an ocean lit up like a thousand sparkling sapphires, a snazzy form of transport (yacht on sea, Jeep on beach), a few attractive foreigners, and a scantily clad woman. See Duran Duran’s Rio.

• Any mention of sunshine or summeriness. Even when the sky is the colour of sludge, torrential rain is filling your shoes and the wind has blown your barbecue into the neighbours’ garden, the mere mention of hot weather will get the skin tanning.

• Promotional CDs distributed around clubs in Ibiza, east London and Doncaster, DJs kissed and petted, and the song pouring out of car windows strategically left open outside sweaty offices and schools. Hey presto – guaranteed summer lovin’!

• Any mention of youth and freedom that takes listeners back to the hazy days of their school holidays. Longer narratives about nostalgia work, too. This explains why Bryan Adams’s Summer of ’69 gets hyperactive kids dancing with drunk grannies at weddings.

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