Everyday People Introduction
In a Nutshell
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame calls Sly and the Family Stone "the funky pied pipers of the Woodstock generation." (Source)Hey, we'd take that as a compliment.
The 1968 hit "Everyday People" was their anthem, but not so much a call to arms as a call to link arms.
Just check out these lines:
And different strokes for different folks
And so on and so on and scooby dooby doo-bee
Let's be real: It's a little hard not to wonder how something this cheesy could be such a big hit. To understand "Everyday People," we have to look beyond Smarties commercials and even beyond Woodstock to the history of—and this might surprise you—Sesame Street.
Not only are we takin' it back to 1968, but yep, we're takin' it back to our ABCs.
About the Song
| Artist | Sly and the Family Stone | Musician(s) | Sly Stone (vocals), Rose Stone (lead and background vocals, piano), Freddie Stone (background vocals, guitar), Larry Graham (background vocals, bass), Vet Stewart, Mary McCreary and Elva Mouton as "Little Sister" (background vocals), Greg Errico (drums), Jerry Martini (tenor saxophone), Cynthia Robinson (trumpet) |
| Album | Stand! | ||
| Year | 1968 (Single), 1969 (Album) | ||
| Label | Epic | ||
| Writer(s) | Sly Stone | ||
| Producer(s) | Sly Stone | ||
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Learn to play: Guitar Buy this song: Amazon iTunes |
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Shmoop Connections
Listening in 2011, Sly and the Family Stone's happiest, funkiest, and most popular song can sound a little bit like a series of slogans for a multicultural fair, or like an odd Smarties commercial from 2008.People are diverse, and so are the colors of all the different Smarties flavors. Or something like that.
To understand the song, we have to look back to 1968 and 1969. After all, these were the days of fighting for civil rights and flower power. People loved songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" and "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)."
But the Beatles were still a band that mostly served to bring rock and roll's appeal to white teens, and James Brown was still "Black music" that was hard to sell to white audiences, who tended to fear the messages of the Black Power Movement.
For all the rhetoric spinning around the hippie generation, genuine multiculturalism was rare.
Sly and the Family Stone, a band of hippie stoners from the Bay Area with an incredibly funky new sound, blended races, genders, and musical genres onstage, living the dream that "Everyday People" was about. It became the signature song for that idealistic era. And the seemingly corny nature of the song can actually tell us a lot about history that we may take for granted decades later.
On the Charts
"Everyday People" peaked at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the Billboard R&B charts. It was the band's first number one single.Stand! went up to #13 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and #3 on the R&B Albums chart in 1969.
Sly and the Family Stone were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.
Rolling Stone put "Everyday People" at #146 on its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list, and Stand! comes in at #121 on their list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
Last but not least, Sly and the Family Stone is #43 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.