Songfacts®:

• Joe South explores some heavy topics in this song, which looks at class divides, religion, and deception. When you encounter someone who is always trying to get ahead or push some agenda, the song will ring true.
  
  It was released in 1968, a time of profound cultural shifts in America as the Vietnam War raged on, but it's not a typical protest song. Rather than pointing the finger at politicians and war mongers, it examines human nature - the drives and desires that motivate but also corrupt us. The worst of it are the greedy who gauge their success by their new worth, but the folks who tell you how to live can be rather odious as well. South singles out the gurus and spiritual leaders - plentiful around this time - as agents of deception:
  
  People walking up to ya
  Singing glory Hallelujah
  And they're tryin' to sock it to you
  In the name of the Lord
• The song was inspired by the 1964 book Games People Play: The Psychology Of Human Relationships by the Canadian psychologist Eric Berne. The main idea behind Berne's book is that we often treat our interactions with others as transactional, always looking to gain an advantage in the metaphorical games we play. And once we "win" a game, we start another one, creating a cycle where we're always competing and never satisfied.
• "Games People Play" was the biggest hit for Joe South as an artist, but he had many more accomplishments as a session musician and songwriter. South was just 18 when he released the novelty single "The Purple People Eater Meets The Witch Doctor" in 1958. Over the next decade, he played guitar on some very famous songs, including Aretha Franklin's "Chain Of Fools," Tommy Roe's "Sheila" and Simon & Garfunkel's "The Sound Of Silence." He also played on Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde album. His songwriting accomplishments include "Rose Garden," made famous by Lynn Anderson, and "Hush," popularized by Deep Purple.
• Joe South did all the vocals and played on the instruments on this song, including the electric sitar.
• The song was first released in 1968 on South's debut album, Introspect, which some consider it the first ever country-soul album. It didn't became a hit until early 1969, so South's next album, released that year, was titled Games People Play and also included the track. The Games People Play album was one of the first to be multitracked.
• "Games People Play" won the Grammy Awards for Song of the Year and Best Contemporary Song, but it came with a price: South put a lot of pressure on himself and ended up retreating from music in 1971; he didn't record again until 1975.
  
  "After you win it, you feel like you have to defend it," he told the Los Angeles Times of the Grammy. "In a sense, I froze. I found it hard to go back into the recording studio because I was afraid the next song wouldn't be perfect."
• Mel Tormé recorded a notable cover version of this song later in 1969 that appeared on his A Time for Us album. The prominent bass in his version was performed by Carol Kaye, who was one of the studio musicians behind hits for The Monkees, The Beach Boys, Joe Cocker and many others. In a Songfacts interview with Carol Kaye, she talked about this session: "There was one time when I overplayed on bass to try to wake up a drummer. The drummer was in on tour and he was sleeping. You could tell that. And it was a big band. He was slowing down in the parts and the part that I was playing was slow according to the tune. The tune required just a few notes on my part, so somebody in the band said, 'Do something, Carol.' So I played a lot of notes and it woke up the drummer. And I walked in the booth after the take, and I said, 'Now we can do a take.' And they looked at me and laughed and said, 'That was the take.' I said, 'Oh, no, that's a bass solo.'
  
  The bass part that I invented is a test now at schools around the world. And he's just going, 'La di da' and here's all this bass and stuff coming in. I thought, That'll never be a hit. And it was a big smash hit for him."
• The Spinners had a hit with "(They Just Can't Stop It The) Games People Play" in 1975, using the parenthetical title so it would be confused with this song. In 1980, The Alan Parsons Project had a hit with another song called "Games People Play."