366 Songs 067: Summer People

The version of “Summer People” that I first heard, by the Webb Brothers from their second album “Maroon,” turns out to be a cover of a song by a band called Hushdrops that is, somewhat surprisingly, very like the Webb Brothers version (If I could’ve found the Hushdrops version on YouTube, it’d be here so you could hear for yourself; as it is, you’ll just have to take my word for it). For some reason, that seems particularly surprising considering that the Webb Brothers were a band whose first album had received the small amount of attention it had because of the songwriting more than the performances; they sound very generic power pop, but there was a melancholy to their lyrics that felt appropriate for the sons of Jimmy “Someone Left A Cake Out In The Rain” Webb, Legendary Songwriter. But, knowing that it’s not an original makes a lot of sense, because “Summer People” is this weirdly bright, almost intentionally so, song with broken lyrics that make little sense (“Winter’s over again/Summer people”) and feel less… literate, perhaps, and more repetitive than everything they’d done before. This is a song about a vibe that only makes sense played loud on a sunny day, celebrating the heat and the warmth and the chance to open up your windows and let your sun shine in. A feeling as much as music, if that makes sense.

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