The song September Gurls features lead vocals by Michael Steele (the track info is incorrect). It was recorded for the album Different Light. Despite the number of successes on this album, not all was well with the Bangle-verse. Tensions had escalated with their producer, David Kahne. During the recording of Different Light, he brought in replacements, at one time or another, for all the Bangles except Micki Steele, who has said, “He loved Sue’s voice, and he loved the way we did harmonies, but everything else was basically shit and he felt like he had to get rid of it, or try to work around it, or do something to make it palatable. I don’t know, maybe he ran out of money before he replaced my bass parts.”
Vicki Peterson says about this, “At one point, I’d had to leave the studio for an emergency, and I came back, and he had had his guy show up and do a solo. It was the backwards thing on ‘September Gurls.’ I hate to burst your bubble, I didn’t play that.
This is one of my nightmare, nightmare stories. I walked into the studio after I had to leave, and this was already done. And Micki’s loving it—she thinks it sounds great! I looked at Kahne and I went ‘Oh! OK.’ And he said ‘Oh … did you want to try something?’ My will had pretty much been broken successfully by that point. It was really awful.”
Susanna Hoffs was more sympathetic towards Kahne, saying “I remember thinking ‘Boy, being a producer is a hard job.’ And I think he made it seem really hard because he was so driven by angst, and kind of perfectionistic. He had been an artist himself and never succeeded as an artist, so I think he was always tormented by ‘How would I do this if it was my record?’”
Of all the Bangles, Debbi had been affected most by Kahne. She said, “He said I physically couldn’t sing one of the songs. Physically couldn’t sing. It was one of those things where you might as well just stab me right now, just kill me. Cut my throat. Cut out my vocal chords. It was so devastating. It was hard for me to bounce back from that.
“I was actually, at one point, feeling kind of suicidal. This guy was screwing with my emotions so bad, and made me feel so shitty, that I just thought well, OK… I should’ve just told him to piss off. But we were caught between a rock and a hard place.” For their next album, Everything, the Bangles found a different producer, Davitt Sigerson. From: https://genius.com/The-bangles-september-gurls-lyrics
"September Gurls" is a song written by Alex Chilton that was first released by Big Star on their second studio album Radio City in 1974. "September Gurls" was also released as a single. The song was named in tribute to the Beach Boys' "California Girls". It was inspired by three of the women in Chilton's life who he was thinking about at the time, including his ex-wife, having birthdays in September. According to Big Star bassist Andy Hummel, Chilton "was going through a lot of different girls that he was having relationships with, kind of simultaneously, and a lot of what's in those songs [including "September Gurls"] is him really just telling of his experiences with them and how he felt about them."
While "September Gurls" was never a big seller, it is considered a classic song by publications such as Rolling Stone and Allmusic, as well as by music journalist John M. Borack who wrote: "September Gurls" was and is the sine qua non of power pop, a glorious glittering jewel with every facet cut and shined to absolute perfection. While the Raspberries' "Go All the Way" provides a definitive encapsulation of what power pop is, "September Gurls" goes even further, not so much as the embodiment of a genre, but as a peerless, aching distillation of love and longing. "September Gurls" may not actually be the greatest song ever recorded, but for the duration of its 2:47 running time, you can be forgiven for believing it is. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_Gurls
