🎧 Our summer ’26 playlist | Morning Newsletter

Good morning. We’re promised some sunshine and a hot high near 94.

It’s that time of year where one definitive track takes the throne as “Song of the Summer,” but we’re not going to play that game. Instead, we’re curating the season’s sounds in one playlist.

Read more Should you drink Philly’s tap water?

And if LeBron James ends up living in New York while playing for the Sixers, he wouldn’t be the first to make that commute.

Scroll along for these Sunday stories and more.

— Paola Pérez ([email protected])

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What’s a summer without a soundtrack?

Pop critic Dan DeLuca has us covered with a curated mix of 30 songs, annotations included. They’re not individually ranked, though, and instead highlight a wide range of the season’s sounds.

Here’s a sampling:

💥 “CRANK” by Slayyyter, serving in-your-face electro-pop.

🎸 “Can’t Be Wrong” from Low Cut Connie, “perhaps the catchiest earworm yet,” as DeLuca put it.

🎤 “Nightmares to Dreams” by Meek Mill, a sequel spin on the unofficial Philadelphia anthem.

Find our full playlist here.

P.S. What’s your song of the summer? Let us know if we missed your favorite(s).

If I could add some of my own, I’d throw in “Too Easy” by Tinashe, “Sun Has Set” by beabadoobee, and “Do It” by underscores (she’s opening for Charli XCX in Philly this fall!).

NBA insiders have said that LeBron James may live in New York City while playing for the 76ers.

If it turns out to be true, he’d be following in the footsteps of another player who had to make the trek to and from Philly in a Sixers jersey.

In the 1960s, Wilt Chamberlain spent most nights in New York, regularly making the drive in luxury cars up and down the turnpike. Friends recall he would burn rubber with his “heavy foot.” (LeBron would probably use a helicopter, though, so he has Chamberlain beat there.)

A New York “magnet,” Chamberlain owned a popular club in Harlem and lived in Manhattan. His choice of residence became a point of contention every time he missed a practice, though.

In 1965, with just a few weeks left in the regular season, then-Sixers owner Ike Richman had Chamberlain move in with him and his family in Elkins Park.

Sports features writer Matt Breen has the full story.

🎤 Here’s Tommy Rowan with a look back at the racially tense transit strike that required an Army intervention.

On Aug. 1, white transit workers with the Philadelphia Transit Co. had gone on strike over the hiring of Black trolley operators.

Black workers were now being given operator jobs, graduating to higher pay and better conditions than in their previous jobs in mechanics and labor.

On Aug. 5, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt dispatched about 5,000 U.S. Army troops to Philadelphia to intervene in the ugly transit strike.

It marked one of the first major federal interventions amid the fight for civil rights.

Read on for the full story.

Luxury homes are getting more expensive in the Philly area, but they’re still selling fast.

Homes that sold for at least _ meet the “luxury” threshold.

A) $975,000

B) $3 million

C) $1.15 million

D) $2.5 million

Think you know? Check your answer.

🧠 Trying to crack: This week’s round of Pillars, The Inquirer’s new word game.

🍝 Loving: The sheer variety of foods Phillies fans bring to Citizens Bank Park, from lucky tuna salad to fanny pack meatballs.

✏️ Hearing: Most Philly school principals believe the district is moving in the right direction, but they also express frustration on various fronts, according to a new survey.

😋 Savoring: The spanakopita at Stina.

🪑 Disarmed by: A pair of sassy chairs at Museum of Art in Wood.

Hint: A long troubled building on Independence Mall

TUB HEROES

Email us if you know the answer. We’ll select a reader at random to shout out here.

Cheers to Judy Pidgeon, who correctly guessed Saturday’s answer: Lauren Cohan of The Walking Dead fame. She is the third most-searched Cherry Hill-born celebrity on Wikipedia.

Pediatricians at CHOP and St. Christopher’s prescribe books to young children as part of a program to boost literacy. Organizers plan to expand it statewide.

🎶 Today’s song sounds like this: “I need to laugh, and when the sun is out / I’ve got something I can laugh about.” The Beatles’ Revolver turned 60 last week.

👋🏽 Thanks for reading, and have a great day.

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