People

PEOPLE

"People" is a song composed by Jule Styne with lyrics by Bob Merrill for the 1964 Broadway musical Funny Girl starring Barbra Streisand, who introduced the song. The song was released as a single in 1964 with "I Am Woman", a solo version of "You Are Woman, I Am Man", also from Funny Girl.

"People" was one of the first songs written for the musical score of Funny Girl. It is based on the life and career of Broadway and film star and comedian Fanny Briceand her stormy relationship with entrepreneur and gambler Nicky Arnstein.

Composer Jule Styne and lyricist Bob Merrill were hired to write the musical score and met each other for the first time in 1962 in Palm Beach, Florida. They wrote their songs by day and tested them by night on the Palm Beach socialites at cocktail parties.

As they worked to develop the character of Fanny Brice, they needed to write a special love song depicting her feelings towards Nicky. According to the book, "Jule: The Story of Composer Jule Styne" by Theodore Taylor, "Jule turned to his collaborator Bob Merrill, 'You told me the other night to work on [the lyric] "a very special person." I think I've got a helluva melody for it.'...'Great,' Merrill yelled. 'But now it's not gonna be just a "special person." Listen.' Then he ad-libbed, while Jule played the melody again: 'People, people who need people, are the luckiest people in the world".'...The song 'wrote' in thirty minutes..." "People" nearly did not get included in "Funny Girl" during early try-outs as the producers did not like it. Bob fought to keep the song in and finally one night, Barbra was allowed to sing it on stage. It stopped the show and history was made.

This beautiful track was created by a very talented musician friend, Andrew Leitch whom I met through The Yamaha Club and he asked me to sing for him. This track was recorded at The Empire Recording Studios in the Autumn of 2012 and released on my album Moments, featured in ALBUMS, above.

This superb video design was created by Maureen Davies.