Sunshine on My Shoulders

Denver said he wrote it in Minnesota in what he called late winter, early spring, on a gray and slushy day when the snow was melting and it was too cold to go outside. It first appeared on Poems, Prayers & Promises in 1971, where Denver plays six-string and twelve-string guitars, Mike Taylor plays acoustic guitar, Richard Kniss double bass and Frank Owens piano.

The song was released as a single in 1973, first as the B-side of I'd Rather Be a Cowboy. It entered the Hot 100 at number 90 on 26 January 1974 and went to number one for a week. It also spent two weeks at the top of the adult contemporary chart and was Billboard's number 18 song of 1974. The single mix added strings and woodwinds and the album version has an extra verse.

Covers and uses

CBS used it as the theme of the television movie Sunshine in 1973. Pat Kelly's reggae cover was a 1974 hit for the producer Duke Reid, and Carly Rae Jepsen released a cover as the promotional single from her album Tug of War in June 2008.