I am an unabashed music fan. And even in a hectic summer, sometimes there’s nothing better than simply driving around and listening to satellite radio’s offerings. One thing I’ve noticed about the popular summer music so far is that there’s definitely a throwback feel to it. Hearing these songs take me back to the early 1980s … though I still have a Huey Lewis CD somewhere in my car.

Fitz and the Tantrums, “Out of My League” – because it reminds me of the B-52s’ “Legal Tender.”

Capital Cities, “Safe and Sound” –

Daft Punk and Pharrell, “Get Lucky” – Actually, Daft Punk’s entire album, “Random Access Memories,” has a late-disco, early New-Wave feel to it.

(Sidebar: Pharrell Williams is uber-talented.)

Robin Thicke/Pharrell/T.I., “Blurred Lines” – I’m posting a link to the Amazon MP3 sample because the video is absolutely atrocious, just a bunch of models with blank stares in flesh-colored underwear dancing around the three guys. So unoriginal.

I could go off on another completely different tangent here, so I will. This is one of the catchiest and funniest songs I’ve listened to this summer. Each time I listen to it, I think, “OK, this is about some douchebag guys getting drunk at a club and using poor come-on lines.” That would have been a much better visual.

Robin Thicke had this to say about the song, in a recent interview on Power 106 in Los Angeles: “We made the whole record in an hour and were walking around the studio like two old men hollering at young girls from the porch. So it’d be like, ‘Hey, girl. Come here.'”

But someone took exception to the lyrics, and labeled them as “kind of rapey.”

For the record, I don’t condone sexual violence of any kind. But calling a song about trying to hook up with women “kind of rapey”? Have you ever listened to Stone Temple Pilots’ “Sex Type Thing”?