Songfacts®:

• This was the first song to be heard from Pete Yorn's Arranging Time album. Lyrically, it's a note to himself not to get stuck chasing highs. Yorn told The Independent: "Arranging Time is a reminder to be present in this moment, I'm the kind of person who for years wherever I was I wouldn't enjoy that place because I thought I was missing out on being somewhere else."
  
  "Right now for instance I'm in London with an amazing opportunity, but I want to be back home with my baby girl. But I don't want to fall into that trap, I want to be here and enjoy this f---ing moment. I put that feeling into the lyrics for 'Summer Was a Day'; it's like that Oasis record Be Here Now and chasing a feeling."
• Yorn told The Sun the story of the song: "I wrote it in Palm Desert, California. It happened really fast. I had the progression and liked the way it kept turning over on itself."
  
  "I recorded it with my touring drummer Scott Selver a week or two later at his home studio northwest of downtown LA."