Minnventory Minnesota songs about the weather finally changing

Spring has been a long time coming this year. And now that it has, boy, we Minnesotans know how to get out there and appreciate the hell out of it. This week’s Minnventory celebrates a few Minnesota songs about what it’s like to feel the sun on your skin for the first time in more than four months, and to think, just maybe, that life is worth living.

Rogue Valley, “The Color Wheel” (from The Bookseller’s House)
Rogue Valley is so Minnesotan, it has a whole cycle of four albums where each represents a different season, a phenomenon that can only occur in regions where people treasure the non-winter times. The spring album is The Bookseller’s House, and the springiest song on it is “The Color Wheel,” with its lush crescendos and abundance of sexy coming-to-life imagery: “We shed our skins / leave our old bodies in the garden / our new ones could be anything.” If taking your clothes off and falling in love in a magical garden isn’t what spring’s all about, we don’t know what is.

Sugar, “Changes” (from Copper Blue)
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from living in the fickle Midwest climate, it’s that season changes make great metaphors for relationships. In “Changes,” Bob Mould keeps it simple: After too long in a wintery relationship, he’s finally ready for “something warm and honest.” Bring on those titular changes, baby, because fuck a winter, we deserve spring.

Hüsker Dü, “Celebrated Summer” (from New Day Rising)
Combine Bob Mould’s sentiment in “Changes” with his depressive semi-welcoming of spring in “Celebrated Summer,” and you see a man who has spent a lot of time alone, writing music, wondering if he’ll survive the winter. “Just when I’m ready to sit inside, it’s summer time / should I go fishing or get a friend to hang around,” he muses, illustrating the ambivalence of dusting off the cobwebs and creaking back to life. He also lists the things a MN kid does when it’s warm enough: “getting drunk out on the beach,” “getting out of hand,” and of course, “playing in a band.”

Trampled By Turtles, “Darkness And The Light” (from Duluth)
“I’m Minnesota’s son / even when the cold winds blow,” this song starts out, testifying to the allegiance the Minnesota travellin’ man has to this God-forsaken tundra (and his sweetheart who’s stuck here), even in the darkest December days. Why? Because things change if you just wait it out, as any Minnesotan well knows. Who else but a prairie-stomper could woo a lady with such matter-of-factness: “... when the sun’s in the sky / we’ll have a class outside ... don’t you know these things, they come and go?”

Unknown Prophets, “Summer Heat” (from Summer Heat)
When those seasons finally change, Minnesotans are not afraid to let the door hit winter on its way out. This fresh-poppin’ little ditty by Unknown Prophets contrasts the shitty sludge of winter with the sweaty glory summer, and explains how we’d rather cut the grass, wax the car, and be bitten by mosquitoes, than shovel, scrape windshields, and fear the frostbite. The proudly Minnesotan, angrily winter-weary track even features weatherman extraordinaire Paul Douglas speaking on the subject—you can hear the relief in his voice. As the chorus goes: “It feels good, don’t it?”