"People / I Am Woman"
Popular song, Show tune by Barbra Streisand from the album Funny Girl: Original Broadcast Cast Recording" and "People"
Released	January 1964
Recorded	20 December 1963
Length	3:39
Label	CBS Records 4-42965
Writer	Bob Merrill (lyricist)
Composer	Jule Styne (composer)
Cover versions
many others

"People" is a well-known song, written by Jule Styne (composer) and Bob Merrill (lyricist) for the Broadway musical Funny Girl (1964) starring Barbra Streisand, who introduced the song. It is often known by a line from its chorus, "People who need people....". It has been recorded by Jack Jones, Richard Clayderman, Perry Como, The Supremes and others, but is most closely associated with Streisand as her signature song. The song asserts that "people who need people" — that is, people who love others and are not emotionally cut off from them — are the "luckiest people in the world".

Ella Fitzgerald recorded this live and it can be heard on her CBS release "Ella Fitzgerald at the Newport Jazz Festival Live at Carnegie Hall".

Released as a single with "I Am Woman", a solo version of "You Are Woman, I Am Man", also from "Funny Girl".

Contents 1 Origins 2 Official Barbra Streisand Versions 3 References 4 External links

[edit] Origins

A longstanding story posits that "People" was originally written for Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, the score Styne and Merrill released directly before Funny Girl.^[1] Presumably, it was sung to Scrooge by his fiancee and later by Scrooge after his redemption. However, Theodore Taylor's biography, Jule: The Story of Composer Jule Styne, would seem to dispute this. It states that "People" was one of the first songs written for Funny Girl, in late 1962 in Palm Beach, Florida.

According to the book, "Jule [said], '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 ain't gonna be "special person." Listen.' Then he ad-libbed, while Jule played the melody again: 'People, people who need people'...The song 'wrote' in thirty minutes..."^[2]

The single by Streisand was released in January 1964, and peaked at #5 on the Billboard pop chart, becoming the singer's first Top 40 hit. It also spent three weeks at #1 on the Easy Listening chart, which would later become known as the Adult Contemporary chart. This helped to cement its inclusion in Funny Girl, which ran on Broadway from March 26, 1964 to July 1, 1967. and earned Styne and Merrill a nomination for a 1964 Tony Award as Best Composer and Lyricist. The single version was recorded on 20 December 1963 and produced by Mike Berniker.

The song has since been used many times on various programs.

[edit] Official Barbra Streisand Versions

• "People" ("Funny Girl" Original Broadway Cast Recording)
• "People" ("Funny Girl" Original Soundtrack Album Recording)
• "People" ("People" Album Version) / (Single Version) / (Second Recorded Take)

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Funny Girl in the Internet Broadway Database (IBDB)

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