Summer in the City (The Lovin’ Spoonful song)
“Summer in the City” is a song recorded by The Lovin’ Spoonful and written by John Sebastian, Mark Sebastian, and Steve Boone.
It appeared on their album Hums of the Lovin’ Spoonful and reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, in August 1966, for three consecutive weeks. The song features car horns and jackhammer noises, during the instrumental bridge, to represent the sounds of a noisy city street. The song became a gold record. It is ranked #401 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The song originated from one started by John Sebastian’s younger brother, Mark, while living as a teenager in his parents’ apartment on Washington Square West in New York City. When the Lovin’ Spoonful needed new songs for their third studio album in 1966, John Sebastian took the basic song and added verses, together with a middle eight created by bassist Steve Boone. The studio recording at Columbia Studios, produced by Erik Jacobsen with engineer Roy Halee, added electric piano played by studio musician Artie Schroeck, together with sound effects of traffic and industrial noises.
The song grips your attention from the opening bars, with its ominous descending two-note organ riff, punctuated by a doom-laden drumbeat. Then it’s off into the minor-keyed verses, decorated by stuttering dramatic keyboards and John Sebastian’s uncharacteristic (but excellent) urgent vocal, rolling out the lyrics of city images so fast that it seems like his tongue is on the verge of losing pace with them. But with some ascending notes, the song glides into a merrier extended bridge.
And the more upbeat tune in this portion is mirrored by more upbeat words, describing the relief when the sun sets and the temperature becomes more bearable, nightlife takes off, and you can find a girl (presumably to go dancing with and, most likely, go further with too). Greater melancholy returns at the end of this bridge, though, when Sebastian muses how it would be so much better if days were like the night when it’s summer in the city.
After those bridges, there’s another great musical hook in the eerie guitar riffs backed by a floating organ, as if to symbolize creeping dangers around the corner (if only the inevitable rising of the sun to mark the end of the night and the onset of another brutally hot day). At one point when we hear that riff, there’s a particularly inventive addition of honking horns and jackhammer sound effects, aurally (and, mercifully, briefly) illustrating how the city can get irritating as well as exciting. The minor-keyed stuttering keyboard riff returns to introduce the instrumental fade, which fades completely just as the point where the organ takes the melody into a slightly more chipper place.
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