Take Me Home, Country Roads

Bill Danoff and Taffy Nivert, who performed as Fat City, got the idea driving along Clopper Road in Montgomery County, Maryland, on the way to a Nivert family gathering. Danoff had never been to West Virginia but had heard WWVA from Wheeling as a boy in Massachusetts. He later said the song was about country roads anywhere. They had thought of it as one for Johnny Cash. In December 1970 Fat City opened for Denver at the Cellar Door in Washington. He had already recorded their I Guess He'd Rather Be in Colorado and wanted more, and after a show he came back to their apartment, where they had a melody, a chorus and a first verse. Together they wrote the second verse and the bridge through the night. Danoff recalled that by 6:30 in the morning they had the song as it is known today. Denver sang it at the Cellar Door on 30 December. The West Virginia Encyclopedia says it was briefly called Rhododendron, and Milt Okun said it began as Country Roads and was renamed because James Taylor already had a song by that title.

Denver recorded it in New York with Okun and Susan Ruskin producing, and Danoff and Nivert sang on the record. Danoff's first thought on hearing it was that it had too much echo. Released as a single in April 1971 with Poems, Prayers and Promises on the B-side, it reached number two on the Hot 100, behind the Bee Gees' How Can You Mend a Broken Heart, and topped Cash Box and Record World. Danoff said in 2011 that he and Nivert take three quarters of the royalties.

It entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry in 2023, and West Virginia made it one of its state songs in 2014. West Virginia University has played it before home football games since 1972, and it was played at Senator Robert Byrd's funeral in 2010. Denver's official biography recalls him being told in China that it was the most famous song written in the West.

Live and covers

setlist.fm records 181 performances by Denver, more than any of his songs except Rocky Mountain High, and he sang it at his last concert in 1997. Olivia Newton-John had a hit with it in 1973, Toots and the Maytals moved it to Jamaica in 1974, and Yoko Honna sang it in Japanese in Studio Ghibli's Whisper of the Heart. The Hermes House Band took it to number one in Scotland in 2001, a version made for a Fallout 76 trailer topped iTunes in 2018, and Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll interpolated it in Lonely Road in 2024. The upload in the hypersongs web is the official audio upload.