Songfacts®:

• "People Help The People" is a track from Thirst For Romance, the first album by Cherry Ghost, which at the time was the name for Simon Aldred's solo project. Aldred explained to Songfacts:
  
  "The song was written in mid-December 2005, initially as an attempt at a life-affirming 'Give Peace A Chance'-style Christmas song, but quickly changed into something more universal. It was always about empathy and a sense of 'more unites us than divides us.'
  
  In 2006 I started to play the song at small gigs around Manchester with an acoustic guitar and demoed it quite early on around that time. Over the next year the song changed slightly until it was nailed down for the recording of my album Thirst For Romance in 2007."
• The line "kissed the girls and made them cry" is a reference to the nursery rhyme Georgie Porgie; "If I had a brain" references The Wizard Of Oz.
• The singer Birdy, just 15 at the time, released a popular cover of "People Help The People" on her self-titled debut album in 2011. Her version was a hit throughout Europe and charted at #33 in her native UK.
• Cherry Ghost became a full-fledged band for their next album, Beneath This Burning Shoreline, in 2010. They released another album in 2014 before splitting up a few years later. Simon Aldred found form as a songwriter for other artists; his co-writes include "Leave Your Lover" by Sam Smith and the title track to Liam Gallagher's second album, Why Me? Why Not. He also provided vocals for Avicii's 2015 track "Waiting for Love."