Everyday People
| "Everyday People" | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by Sly and the Family Stone | ||||||||||
| from the album Stand! | ||||||||||
| B-side | "Sing a Simple Song" | |||||||||
| Released | November 1968 | |||||||||
| Format | 7" single | |||||||||
| Recorded | 1968 | |||||||||
| Genre | ||||||||||
| Length | 2:22 | |||||||||
| Label |
Epic 5-10407 |
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| Writer(s) | Sly Stone | |||||||||
| Producer(s) | Sly Stone | |||||||||
| Sly and the Family Stone singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"Everyday People" is a 1968 song by Sly and the Family Stone. It was the first single by the band to go to number one on the Soul singles chart and the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart. It held that position, on the Hot 100, for four weeks from February 15 to March 14, 1969, and is remembered as a popular song of the 1960s. Billboard ranked it as the No. 5 song of 1969. As with most of Sly & the Family Stone's songs, Sly Stone was credited as the sole songwriter.
The song is one of Sly Stone's pleas for peace and equality between differing races and social groups, a major theme and focus for the band. The Family Stone featured Caucasians Greg Errico and Jerry Martini in its lineup, as well as females Rose Stone and Cynthia Robinson; making it the first major integrated band in rock history. Sly & the Family Stone's message was about peace and equality through music, and this song reflects the same.
Unlike the band's more typically funky and psychedelic records, "Everyday People" is a mid-tempo number with a more mainstream pop feel. Sly, singing the main verses for the song, explains that he is "no better / and neither are you / we are the same / whatever we do."
Sly's sister Rose Stone sings bridging sections that mock the futility of people hating each other for being tall, short, rich, poor, fat, skinny, white, black, or anything else. The bridges of the song contain the line "different strokes for different folks," which became a popular catchphrase in 1969 (and inspired the name of the later television series, Diff'rent Strokes). Rose's singing ends each part of the bridge with the words: "And so on, and so forth, and Scooby Dooby Doo"
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