Pools are the best part of summer, whether you’re lounging by the poolside or swimming through their unexpected depths. Water often reflects our emotions when it’s found featured in works of art, and pop music is no exception.
We’ve collected some of the best pop songs about pools which not only capture the crystalline beauty of water on a hot day, but peer deep into our the murky depths otherwise kept hidden.
Songs About Pools
1. Stephen Sanchez – The Pool
Stephen Sanchez’s The Pool is a dreamy pop track that sounds like falling hopelessly in love. Its simple, revolving melody echoes hypnotically as the textured landscape behind it builds and swells, summoning its power as slowly as a pool gradually filling with water.
Stephen’s vocal tone is mesmerising as he matches his girlfriend’s eyes with the shimmer of azure water, centring his lyrics in love, trust and the deepest layers of emotion;
“I can’t help but fall when I look into you eyes, so blue, I love the hue, but, more than that, I do love you … Would you trust me to catch you at the bottom of the pool, if I told you my whole heart that I loved you.”
2. Wallows – Ice Cold Pool
Wallow’s track Ice Cold Pool free-spiritedly crosses the genres to craft a strange yet refreshing fusion, which could be loosely described as Brit pop meets disco.
Wallow paint Beatles-style vocals over indie rock verses, mixing in steel-drums, church organs, quirky synths and a trumpet hook sounding with the brightness of a summer pop anthem, creating a colourful pop ambience like no other.
While this track is about being young and in love, Wallow tie in the pool concept through their bridge lyric; “The plant inside that never seemed to die, you cut it down before the leaves were brown, the gate was closed, we know that we’re too old, the pool is cold, the pool is cold.”
3. Laura Jane Grace – The Swimming Pool Song
Laura Jane Grace puts a morbid twist on acoustic rock, her nourishing earthy tones intertwined with a searing punk influence upon her authentic vocal style.
From its first line, “I am a haunted swimming pool, I am emptied out and drained,” The Swimming Pool Song shines a dark light upon a usual symbol of luxury, mirroring the water’s peace through the track’s stripped back acoustic landscape, and its fatal, emotional consequences through its stripes of gutting, punk inspiration.
4. The Backseat Lovers – Pool House
The Backseat Lovers 2019 track, Pool House, harbours a flurry of tropical island flourishes upon its indie rock track, morphing gradually from a crystal clean sound into the grungy, distorted depths of rock.
The Backseat Lovers tell a moody story of a pool house party that proves impossible to enjoy, the narrator separating themself from the cheating impulses of teenage parties;
“Waiting around for something to change my mood, ‘cause I know butts and plastic cups isn’t going to … Your lunch is on its way back up but you’re still in the pool … I’ll risk it all to find a place where I can hear my thoughts, the song is playing way too loud, but upstairs they’re still making out, I’m still choked up, I guess it’s just my luck, and I’m stuck on the porch, what am I waiting for?”
5. Emmy The Great – Swimming Pool
Emmy The Great pads her track Swimming Pool with a hypnotic piano, its heavy, haunting reverb conjuring the ambience of having been drowned in love’s abyssal ocean, and clouded by the sinking shadows of wistful emotion.
This track has a heavenly aura to it, with an array of soft electronic elements shimmering upon the surface like the sun catching the ripples of a wave.
Swimming Pool carries a metaphor of “your blue swimming pool,” – a line which could symbolise a number of romantic sentiments, including diving head-first into love, the longing for luxury, and the ocean which separates a long-distance relationship;
“You’re a blue swimming pool, so clear and so new, I reach out and touch you, but you jump into your blue swimming pool. Hey rich kid, I want it, the sunshine, the timeline, your good time, and your blue swimming pool.”
6. Lea Porcelain – Pool Song
This 2021 post-punk song by Lea Porcelain harnesses a sound so authentic it could be mistaken for a true 1980s track.
Pool Song is clad with a celestial night-time atmosphere, its dreamy resonance swelling and slowly evolving, built upon an iconic 80s-style mix of synth pads, samples and a guitar sound as if plucked straight from the golden era of The Cure’s discography.
While their lyrics make no direct reference to pools, Lea Porcelain reflect the emotional aspects of water by anchoring their song in the concept of a tumultuous relationship;
“Will you, for whom I seem doomed, forever stand by me, you end with all my failure, hold onto the stream, sweet dream that I can recall, a terrifying one, desire’s aching bliss now, and I can’t get a hold, but hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.”
7. Lxandra – Swimming Pools
Lxandra’s pop track Swimming Pools utilises the luxury of backyard swimming pools as a metaphor for the materialistic nature of modern society, demonstrating that wealth doesn’t always play a part in defining your happiness;
“We’re the kids who don’t have swimming pools in their backyards… I don’t need no money to be racing, ooh, I’m happy with the memories of chasing you, still the kids who don’t have swimming pools in their 40 million square feet mansions.”
Swimming Pools reflects upon fortune and the rich feeling of contentment, against a beautiful piano backing track sounding with soft, seeping melancholy.
8. Dire Straits – Twisting By The Pool
Dire Straits’ 1983 single, Twisting By The Pool, is a dance-worthy vacation anthem with a sunny retro ambience. This upbeat track tells a story of going on holiday to a villa, its lyrics laced with bright, touristy descriptions which make you long for the wild, free-spirited days of summer;
“Sitting in a small cafe now, swing, swing, swinging to the cabaret, you wanna see a movie, take in a show now, meet new people at the disco? … Twisting by the pool, we’re twisting by the pool, you’re gonna look so cute, sunglasses and bathing suits, be the baby of my dreams, like the ladies in the magazine.”