"That Summer" is a 1993 song released by American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 country music

Country music

Country music is a popular American musical style that began in the rural Southern United States in the 1920s. It takes its roots from Western cowboy and folk music...

 artist Garth Brooks

Garth Brooks

Troyal Garth Brooks , best known as Garth Brooks, is an American country music artist who helped make country music a worldwide phenomenon. His eponymous first album was released in 1989 and peaked at number 2 in the US country album chart while climbing to number 13 on the Billboard 200 album chart...

. It debuted on his fourth studio album The Chase

The Chase (Garth Brooks album)

The Chase is the fourth studio album of American country music artist Garth Brooks. It was released on September 22, 1992 on Liberty Records and sold 403,000 copies in its first week, The Chase debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and Top Country Albums chart. and has been certified 9 x...

and also appears on The Hits, The Ultimate Hits

The Ultimate Hits

The Ultimate Hits is an album from country music artist Garth Brooks, released on November 6, 2007, comprising 34 songs over two compact discs, as well as a DVD containing his music videos....

, The Limited Series and Double Live. It reached #1 on the Billboard Country Charts in 1993. The song was written by Garth Brooks, Pat Alger

Pat Alger

Pat Alger is a country music songwriter, singer and guitarist.-Biography:Alger attended Georgia Tech studying architecture but decided to concentrate on writing songs. He started as a solo folk performer at folk clubs...

 and Sandy Mahl.

Background and writing

On the 1996 television special, "The Garth Brooks Story", Garth talks about writing "That Summer":
"That Summer started out as a single guy and a married woman meeting at a party. The married woman being ignored by who she was with, and they snuck off together. Allen Reynolds told me, "Man, I just don't find myself pulling for these characters. It doesn't seem innocently cool." I was thinking that he was right. Going home that night in the truck I started singing she has a need to feel the thunder. Sandy started helping me write the chorus and we got the chorus done. Probably one of the neat things that I love about That Summer is that I think the song is very sexy."

Content

The song is about a teenage boy who goes to work for a "lonely widowed woman", who was located out in the middle of nowhere "A teenage kid so far from home". One night, she comes to him wearing a dress "she hadn't worn in quite a while." He is most likely referring to the dress as seductive and that he was the first one to see her in it in a while. He also notices a difference in her attitude. The two make love "She had to ride the heat of passion." The song goes on to relate that years afterward every time he passes a wheat field, he remembers the summer with her.

Criticism

Despite its praises, this song has received criticism for romanticizing statutory rape

Statutory rape

The phrase statutory rape is a term used in some legal jurisdictions to describe sexual activities where one participant is below the age required to legally consent to the behavior...

. "That Summer portrays a teenage ranch hand losing his virginity to a widow of indeterminate age, and this is treated as a very good thing. Of course, this example is ambiguous since the boy is seventeen and the widow might not be that old, but it's hard to imagine a song that portrayed a seventeen-year-old girl losing her virginity to a widower of indeterminate age in a good light being as well received as That Summer."

Chart positions

"That Summer" debuted at number 54 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks for the week of May 8, 1993.

Chart (1993)	Peak position
U.S. Billboard Hot Country Singles & Tracks	1
Canadian RPM Country Tracks	1