Summertime

"Summertime" is an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics, in two stanzas, are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based.

The song soon became a popular and much-recorded jazz standard, described as "without doubt... one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote... Gershwin's highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of Black people in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century". Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim characterized Heyward's lyrics for "Summertime" and "My Man's Gone Now" as "the best lyrics in the musical theater". In June 2026, CBS News included the song in its list of the 250 essential American songs of the past 250 years.