Summer in the City - The Lovin' Spoonful

"Summer in the City" is the Lovin' Spoonful's only #1 single. While at Blair Academy, Mark Sebastian submitted the lyrics as a poem for the literary magazine. That poem, entitled "Summer In the City," had the refrain "but at night it's a different world, go out and find a girl, come on, come on and dance all night, despite the heat it'll be alright, and babe don't you know it's a pity, the days can't be like the night, in the summer in the city." His older brother John changed the slower verses to a more upbeat model, keeping the title and the refrain. Mark's part remains as he wrote it, words and music. Bassist Steve Boone added the instrumental coda in the middle."Summer in the City" was on the album Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful and it reached #1on the Billboard Hot 100 in August 1966. The song featured a series of car horns, during the instrumental bridge, starting with a Volkswagen Beetle horn, and ending up with a jackhammer sound, in order to give the impressions of the sounds of the summer in the city. The song is ranked number 393 on Rolling Stone's list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.