Summer in the City

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"Summer In The City" was a 1966 hit single by the Lovin' Spoonful. It came from their album, Hums of the Lovin' Spoonful. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 13, 1966, replacing The Troggs' hit "Wild Thing". It remained at the top spot for three weeks, and was followed by Donovan's hit, "Sunshine Superman". 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 was featured the episode of the television series The Simpsons entitled "Papa's Got a Brand New Badge", and the Only Fools and Horses episode, "Miami Twice". It was also used in the opening scenes of the Bruce Willis action film Die Hard: With a Vengeance. It has also been featured in recent Gatorade commercials. It has also been featured in the 1994 PBS miniseries, Baseball a film by Ken Burns. Cover versions of the song include Joe Cocker in 1993, The Stranglers on their 1997 album Written in Red, and Joe Jackson released in 2000 a live album titled Summer in the City: Live in New York. The album opens with a cover of the song. The Butthole Surfers also covered the song.

The Quincy Jones cover of Summer in the City has been sampled by Massive Attack in the song Exchange from their acclaimed album Mezzanine, and also by Nightmares on Wax in his song Night's Introlude on the album Smokers Delight. Another cover, by the Gutter Brothers appeared on the soundtrack to the Only Fools and Horses film Miami Twice. The song has also been covered by UK jazz-dance act, Incognito on the 2006 album "Bees + Things + Flowers".