"Summer in the City" is a song by the American folk rock band the Lovin' Spoonful. Written by John Sebastian, Mark Sebastian and Steve Boone, the song was released as a non-album single in July 1966 and was included on the album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful later that year. The single was the Lovin' Spoonful's fifth to break the top ten in the United States and their only to reach . A departure from the band's lighter sound, the recording features a harder rock style. The lyrics differ from most songs about the summer by lamenting the heat, contrasting the unpleasant warmth and noise of the daytime with the relief offered by the cool night, which allows for the nightlife to begin.
John Sebastian reworked the lyrics and melody of "Summer in the City" from a song written by his teenage brother Mark. Boone contributed the song's bridge while in the studio. The Lovin' Spoonful recorded "Summer in the City" in two sessions at Columbia Records' 7th Avenue Studio in New York in March 1966. Erik Jacobsen produced the sessions with assistance from engineer Roy Halee, while Artie Schroeck performed as a session musician on a Wurlitzer electric piano. The recording is an early instance in pop music of added sound effects, made up of car horns and a pneumatic drill to mimic city noises.
"Summer in the City" has since received praise from several music critics and musicologists for its changing major-minor keys and its inventive use of sound effects. The song has been covered by several artists, including Quincy Jones, whose 1973 version won the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Arrangement and has since been sampled by numerous hip hop artists.
Background and composition
The Lovin' Spoonful completed their first two albums, Do You Believe in Magic and Daydream, over a period of six months. In need of new material for their next LP, John Sebastian, the band's principal songwriter, recalled a song composed and informally taped by his teenage brother, Mark, titled "It's a Different World". Written when Mark was 14, it featured a bossa nova-like sound and rudimentary lyrics, written in the style of soul singer Sam Cooke.
John expanded on Mark's original composition, reworking the melody and "[replacing] Mark's laconic verses with more vital, upbeat ones." John was pleased with Mark's original line, "But at night it's a different world", determining that the verse before that point needed to build up tension toward an eventual release: "I was going for the scary, minor chord, hit-the-road-Jack chord sequence that doesn't warn you of what's coming in the chorus." He later compared his resulting first verse to the tension established in Modest Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain, which he knew from the 1940 film Fantasia. He incorporated into the verse a riff session player Artie Schroeck had played between takes during their sessions for the What's Up, Tiger Lily? soundtrack. While recording the song, the band determined that a bridge or middle eight was needed to complement John's "tense" and "free-swinging" parts, prompting bassist Steve Boone to suggest a "jazzy figure", a "piano interlude" which he later said "sounded a little bit like [American pianist] George Gershwin".
Lyrics and music
While most songs about summer romanticize warm weather, the lyrics of "Summer in the City" lament the heat of the daytime. The combined unpleasantness of the daytime heat and noise are directly contrasted with the relief offered by nighttime, whose cooler temperatures allow for city nightlife to begin, consisting in dancing and finding dates. Sadness returns again when the singer complains that the days in the city cannot be like the nights.
The song opens with two descending notes (a flattened or minor sixth followed by a perfect fifth degree of a minor scale) played three times. This intro is played in octaves by the lead guitar, bass and electric piano. On the fourth beat of each bar, a snare and bass drum smash. While the two note descent establishes the song in a minor mode, the verse suggests a Dorian mode. The vocal of the verse is entirely minor-pentatonic. John's arpeggiation on the major V (heard at "[5] all around, [7] people lookin' [2] half dead", as noted by Everett) confirms the mode is minor before immediately shifting back to major when his voice is joined in harmony (heard at "hotter than a matchhead").