Summer in the City

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This article is about the hit single. For the film see Summer in the City (film)

"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 on The Simpsons episode "Papa's Got a Brand New Badge", Only Fools and Horses episode "Miami Twice", in the opening scenes of the Bruce Willis action film Die Hard: With a Vengeance, in a Gatorade commercial, the 1994 PBS documentary Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns.

On a VH1 Classic episode concerning the album Disraeli Gears by Cream, it was asserted that the predominant guitar riff of the song "Tales of Brave Ulysses" from Disraeli Gears was taken from the keyboard riff of "Summer in the City".

Cover versions of the song include Quincy Jones in 1973, 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 covered the song on "Music for Our Mother Ocean (MOM)" Series No. 3 released in 1999. STYX covered the song on their "Big Bang Theory" released in 2005.

The Quincy Jones cover of "Summer in the City" has been sampled by Massive Attack in the song "Exchange" from their acclaimed album Mezzanine, Nightmares on Wax in his song "Night's Introlude" on the album Smokers Delight, and also by The Pharcyde on their seminal hit "Passin' Me By" from the album Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde. 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.