There’s nothing better than playing an album, kicking back and relaxing without feeling the need to skip around to find a good song. So, the question is, what’s an album that fulfills that requirement? An album that features bop after bop is Summer’s Over by TV Girl and Jordana.
Summer’s Over was released October 13, 2021 and contains seven indie rock songs, making this EP only 21 minutes long. Despite its short length, this album is truly a masterpiece. This album is so unique, and that’s because it incorporates Jordana’s sweet voice with TV Girl’s pattern of sampling songs, and creates an un-skippable combination. These two elements come together as a whole to represent the somber end of all that comes with the changing season of summer to fall.
Behind TV Girl and Jordana
TV Girl is an indie pop band that consists of Brad Petering, Jason Wyman, and Wyatt Harmon. The band formed in 2010, and their debut album, French Exit, was released in 2014. This album is notably one of their most popular albums due to the exposure TikTok has given to it, making clips from their songs like “Lover’s Rock” popular TikTok sounds. According to Genius, TV Girl “takes self-identity and ponders it alongside themes of sexuality, isolation, and social status,” all while accompanying their songs with beats and sampling from other artists. They have released four studio albums: French Exit, Who Really Cares, Death of a Party Girl, and Grapes Upon the Vine. They also have other EP albums, like Summer’s Over.
Jordana Nye is an indie pop artist who goes by Jordana. She has multiple EPs and singles, but her most listened to songs on Spotify are all songs from Summer’s Over. She self-released her debut album in 2019, Classical Notions of Happiness. However in 2020, the NY independent label Grand Jury re-released the album and expanded upon it as well.
TV Girl’s Sampling Style
What I find so cool about TV Girl’s music is how so many of their songs include sampling from different artists, shows, media, etc. If you don’t know what sampling is, it’s when you take a snippet of audio from another source and rework it into a new track. TV Girl has done this with many of their popular songs that you have probably heard on TikTok, like “Lover’s Rock”. This song samples two audios from two different types of media. One of the samples is from the song “The Dance is Over” (1960) by The Shirelles, serving as the intro for the song and also playing throughout the entirety of the song in the background. The second sample is from a theater drama, “Dangerously Yours” and plays as the outro for the song. I think that sampling is such a cool way to incorporate and appreciate prior works of art into modern media.
Sampling in Summer’s Over
Some of the songs in Summer’s Over have sampling in them, which make them some of my favorite songs off of the album. One of the songs that features sampling is “Jump the Turnstile”. This song samples a song from the Beastie Boys, a hip hop group from the ’80s. Their song “3-Minute Rule” is played throughout this track. Another one of the songs that features sampling is “Better in the Dark”. The song begins with Jordana singing, and the outro includes a sample from the radio show Night Beat. The snippet is from the episode “The Girl in the Park”, starting at 1:05 and extending to the song’s outro. There’s another sample in this song, but is unidentifiable by the song’s fans. The consensus among fans of this song agree that it is probably from a Beastie Boys’ song or even a combination of their songs, as TV Girl uses many of their songs as samples in their other songs.
Summer’s Over is one of my favorite albums, simply because of the combination of music styles between Jordana and TV Girl. Jordana’s beautiful voice paired with TV Girl’s style of different beats and sampling from other media crafts un-skippable songs in an album that you need to listen to.
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