Billboard monitors the best performing songs of the summer, ranking them based on sales, radio play, and other factors. The concept of a summer song originated in 1910 when an article in the New York Tribune asked readers to choose a romantic, sentimental, or nonsensical song for the summer.
About the Song: Before the Boys of Summer music video hit MTV in 1985, only die-hard Eagles fans knew about Don Henley. Henley co-founded The Eagles and happily hid behind his drum kit until starting his solo career in 1981.
First Appearance: This single hit record stores on June 27, 1983. But most of the world probably first heard Cruel Summer from the widely aired 1983 music video. By the time it was featured in the 1984 film The Karate Kid, people worldwide felt ‘summer’ and ‘Bananarama’ were inseparable.