Van Halen ‘Summer Nights’ vs. Chicago, ‘Saturday in the Park’: Greatest Summer Song Battle

We've reached the second round in our Greatest Summer Song battle. In this contest, Van Halen's "Summer Nights" is matched up against Chicago's "Saturday in the Park."

After starting with 32 of classic rock’s best summertime songs last week, we're now down to 16 for the second round. Over the next four weeks the field will be repeatedly cut in half by your votes until we arrive at the greatest summer song ever made.

Both contestants had no trouble getting through to the second round. Van Halen's "Summer Nights" blew out its first-round competition, "Feel Good Hit of the Summer" by Queens of the Stone Age, by a 72-28 percent margin. The song was an album rock radio hit from their first album of the Sammy Hagar era, 5150.

To get to the second round, Chicago's "Saturday in the Park" also handily defeated their competition, which was Billy Joel's "Summer, Highland Falls," taking almost 70 percent of the vote. The easy-going, horn-driven ode to a pastoral summer day was Chicago's biggest hit to date, peaking at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972.

So which song will make it through to the semifinals? That's where you come in. We've embedded both songs below so that you can make an informed decision. You can vote once per hour in each of the eight second-round Greatest Summer Song battles until voting closes on Aug. 3 at 11:59PM ET. Your choice for the Greatest Summer Song of all time will be revealed on Aug. 25, 2015.

Watch Chicago Perform ‘Saturday in the Park’

Hear Van Halen Perform ‘Summer Nights’

See Van Halen and Other Rockers in the Top 100 Albums of the '80s