What makes a summer song special, asks Olivia Kelleher

Ian Dempsey, broadcaster

My song of the summer was I'm Not In Love by 10cc from around 1975 which I remember blasting out on the radio during that summer. I was aged 14, just like my son Shane is now. I'm sure he is behaving himself a bit better than I did. Every girl you met at the time - this was it - and then - it wasn't.

The song sounds like a full-blown love song where it's actually the opposite. "I'm not in love - it's just a silly phase I'm goin' through." Summers seemed longer back then. It was your first bit of independence. Spreading your wings for the first time and all that.

I remember listening to summer songs on Radio Luxembourg back then. There was a magic to it - hearing those voices from so many miles away.

Cathy Kelly, author

Dexy's Midnight Runners and Come on Eileen and that awful song, DISCO, by I don't know who.

The DISCO one reminds me of being 14 or 15 and madly into roller disco, although I was hopeless at it. A big group of us used to go and it was almost like going on a date because there were girls and guys. Swoon. I can remember being in the Laurel Park disco in Shankill envying all those fabulous people who could skate backwards - I could barely skate forwards.

Come on Eileen was the soundtrack of so many nights at Bective and although I liked the song, I hated when they played it because people bounced madly and small people like myself were in danger of taller people's elbows.

Kieran Goss, singer-songwriter

My favourite summer memory is Mungo Jerry's In the Summertime. I was about 13 or 14 on holiday in Donegal. I was working on a caravan site. It was the first time that I felt I was getting away and having a bit of independence. I was learning to play the guitar and played all the time.

I thought I was a big guy because I was able to play In the Summertime on the guitar. I remember sitting around a fire on the beach playing that in front of people.

I am from Newry, so going across to Donegal was seen as a mad escape for us. You would think it was miles away. That Mungo Jerry song just tapped in to something for me.

Sharon Owens,author

My earliest memory of a song is Games without Frontiers, by Peter Gabriel.

I was staying in a caravan park in Donegal. There was an on-site shop with a pool table and a jukebox in it. I was about 10 or 11. All the children would gather there in the afternoons and buy milk in pyramid-shaped cartons. I felt very grown-up and glamorous. I will always associate that song with that carefree seaside.

There is also one that meant a lot to me when I was slightly older by Prefab Sprout called The King of Rock and Roll. I was 16 or 17, and madly in love with Dermot (still am). He was a student in Derry, and lived in an old house with a big garden full of apple trees. We sat there in hot sunshine, drinking tins of lager, listening to the radio and kissing for hours.

Gerry Ryan, broadcaster

I think the song that reminds me most of summers past is Alice Cooper's School's Out.

"School's out for summer / School's out forever / School's been blown to pieces / No more pencils / No more books / No more teacher's dirty looks".

Not a very romantic choice, I agree, but back in 1972, dancing in the Donabate community hall with my summer pals, it was an anthem to pure freedom.

Marisa Mackle, author

My favourite summer song ever is The Waterboys' The Whole of the Moon.

I first heard it when I was walking along the sea front in Salthill as a kid. I had been sent to get something from the shop for my mother and heard the Waterboys singing to a few hundred people in a park. I walked over in a trance and sat down on the grass to listen to them.

This summer I was on a yacht in Mallorca at a very glamorous party with some British TV stars. The DJ was playing dance music and everyone was drinking champagne. Some guy on the boat came up to me and said I looked a bit lost. I asked him to choose me a nice song, he said he would and disappeared. Suddenly The Whole of the Moon was being played and for just a few minutes I was transported back in time to that happy family holiday.