Summer never seems to end while you are in the middle of it.

It is hot. Lethargic. Even at night, the air feels heavy. Just walking to the station makes you sweat. The air conditioning in the convenience store feels unnaturally cold. You meet someone, go somewhere, music plays, you drink water, and walk down the night streets. At the time, you think it is just an ordinary summer. But only later do you realize. Perhaps that was the last summer.

So' Fly’s "Last Summer" captures this exact feeling. The track is light. English and Japanese blend seamlessly. It has the smoothness of R&B and the brightness of club pop. It possesses a slightly buoyant, floating lightness that suits Tokyo nights. It is not heavy. It is not dramatic. It does not try to force tears through grand gestures. Yet, the title is "Last Summer." This phrase alone casts a shadow over the song.

Summer is a distinct season for pop music. Romance begins, you travel somewhere, and nights feel endless. There are beaches, fireworks, and city lights, and one's body opens up slightly outward. Yet, summer must end. In fact, summer is only complete with its end. Even more than autumn or winter, summer carries a pronounced sense of finality. Late August. The night breeze shifts slightly, convenience store shelves change, and the city's noise settles down. On the walk home, a subtle feeling of being unable to return creeps in. Only then do you realize that summer was, after all, a stretch of time.

The phrase "Last Summer" names that time in retrospect. You never know a summer is the last while you are living it. The last romance. The last period of freedom. The last moment of innocence. The last time the group gathered. The last time you walked that street. The last time you laughed with that person. The last night spent without a care. You cannot know then. It is simply fun. Simply hot. Simply sleepy. The song just plays on. Only after time has passed do you look back and realize it was the end. That is where the sorrow lies.

"Last Summer" can be enjoyed purely as an upbeat track. Yet, its very brightness amplifies the sense of loss that comes later. If a song is sad from the beginning, the sorrow is easy to read. But a sadness that returns in retrospect, hidden within a light tune, often lingers much deeper in the body. You had fun back then. But you can never go back. That is the feeling.

The sound of So' Fly carries the lightness of Tokyo nights in the 2000s. It is neither heavy rock nor introspective folk, nor is it a playful citation of Shibuya-kei. It is smoother, leans slightly toward the club scene, naturally blends English and Japanese, and flows lightly through the night city. It holds the urban sensibility of never becoming too serious. Chic, slightly euphoric, and just a little lonely. Cafes, bars, clubs, taxis, the station before the last train, the glow of cell phones, the humidity of a summer night, someone's perfume, the convenience store on the way home. These elements form the backdrop of the song.

Yet, this lightness is different from superficiality. Because it is light, it leaves a lasting impression. We do not always spend our most precious moments looking solemn. Rather, the more meaningful a time was, the lighter it felt in the moment. Laughing. Fooling around. Exchanging unimportant talk. Not even remembering what we ate. Where we walked remains vague. Yet, the atmosphere remains. Later on, that lightness catches in your chest. Rather than wanting to return to that summer, you think about how your past self had no idea it was the last. That is what aches.

The term "Last Summer" signifies a summer in the past tense. It is not the summer we are in now. It is not the summer to come. It is a summer that has already ended. Yet, it has not vanished entirely. It returns whenever you play the song. Even though the summer is over, it lingers within the sound.

Pop songs possess that kind of power. They do not preserve a season; they let you hear, in retrospect, that the season has gone. It is vaguer than a photograph, more uncertain than video, yet it remains deep in the body.

Listening to this song, the blending of English and Japanese feels essential. In Japanese alone, the emotion can feel too close. In English alone, it becomes a bit distant. But when English and Japanese intersect, it creates the distinctive distance of an urban night. Close yet far. Intimate yet slightly performative. Sincere yet a bit shy. Sad yet danceable. Tokyo pop music possesses this sense of distance. It does not commit everything to Japanese, nor does it escape entirely into English. It suspends emotion somewhere in between. The lightness of "Last Summer" lies in this floating state.

Memories of summer also float. They are not remembered with perfect clarity, yet they are not completely gone. Who you were with, where you were, what you discussed—even if the fine details are vague, the feeling of that night remains. Music allows for this vagueness. In fact, it preserves things in their blurred state. A diary demands words. A photograph only keeps what is captured on screen. But music brings back even what was never captured. The humidity of the night. Your walking body. Your distance from someone. Words left unsaid. The feeling of not realizing the end was near. These are the things that return.

You realize in retrospect that it was your last summer. This does not apply only to summer. Life is filled with "lasts" that we only understand after the fact. The last day we met. The last street we walked. The last place we worked. The last voice we heard. The last night we laughed together. The last season spent without thinking. Yet we cannot know at the time. Therefore, we usually spend those moments ordinarily. We think we should have cherished them more. But the moment you consciously try to cherish a time, that time becomes something else. Perhaps that is why our final moments must pass without us knowing they are the end.

"Last Summer" wraps this cruelty in a light sound. It does not prompt tears. It does not explain. It simply flows as a pop song for a summer night. Yet, the title alone begins to take effect in retrospect. Last Summer. That was the end. The moment you realize this, the light track becomes slightly heavier. And that heaviness is not unwelcome.

Memories always find their meaning later. At the time, it was just a night. Just a song. Just a summer. But once your body has passed through time, listening to the same song takes on a different meaning. The song has not changed; the body listening to it has.

So' Fly's "Last Summer" reminds us of this. Summer becomes summer only after it ends. The last summer only becomes the last once it is over. And music brings what has ended close to us once more. It never returns completely, but it comes back just a little. The lightness of that night. The humidity of the city. Who we were back then. The body that did not yet know it was the final time. They shine briefly within the song.

Summer ends. But only the summer that has ended returns to us again and again in retrospect.

© SHIRO & Co.

First published: 2026-06-10