Rob Harvilla, writing for The Ringer, remembers the endless summer of Jimmy Buffett.

His job was just beach. His art, his science, his philosophy, his religion, his ethos, his billion-dollar brand: beach. Just beach. “No man is an island entire of itself,” wrote John Donne; “If we couldn’t laugh / We would all go insane,” sang Jimmy Buffett, who died Friday, of skin cancer, at 76, “surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs,” per a post on his Twitter account, which added, “He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.” That collective grief, that camaraderie, that interconnectedness: Of course that’s what “No man is an island” means, but also, no man was more of an island than Jimmy Buffett, a cheerfully boozy and poignantly serene walking vacation of a man where all were welcome and nobody ever had to leave.

You want to do the Sad, Wistful Song first or the Goofy, Ribald Song? Mmm. Yes. You’re absolutely right.

So you hear that Jimmy Buffett died, and maybe you reach instinctively for 1985’s Songs You Know by Heart, his first greatest-hits collection, though the original album cover styles it “Greatest Hit(s),” the parenthetical a typically wry and self-effacing nod to the fact that at the time, at least, his biggest/greatest hit by an order of magnitude was “Margaritaville,” his wistful and absurdly anthemic 1977 sing-along that forever defined his art/religion/brand. But I put this record on this morning, and really every song was a colossal hit, especially “Why Don’t We Get Drunk,” which I used to bellow with my goofy and ribald teenage friends (the chorus begins, “Why don’t we get drunk and screw,” you see) as we drove around the landlocked Midwest in the mid-’90s. But let me politely suggest that you, also, know all of Songs You Know by Heart by heart, even if you’ve never listened to this record (or any other Jimmy Buffett record) by choice, even if you never caught him live, even if you’re no Parrothead, even if tequila’s not your thing.