John Denver paints a picture with his lyrics. He brings the listener along with him on adventures to sprawling mountain peaks, clear-blue lakes, and vast terrains. He doesn’t just love nature, he is devoted to it. Denver has countless stunning lines to pick from, but find four of his most picturesque lyrics, below.
Videos by American Songwriter
[RELATED: 4 Beloved Songs You Didn’t Know John Denver Wrote Solo]
1. He climbed cathedral mountains, he saw silver clouds below / He saw everything as far as you can see (“Rocky Mountain High”)
“Rocky Mountain High” is Denver’s love letter to the place that gave him his stage name, Colorado. Presumably, Denver wrote the track about his own experiences in those palatial surroundings. Though the line “Cathedral mountains” is a reference to a specific range, it almost plays like Denver’s own descriptor. There, high on the mountain top, Denver found himself, thus making it a place for self-reflection much like a traditional cathedral.
2. All my memories gather ’round her / Miner’s lady, stranger to blue water / Dark and dusty, painted on the sky / Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye (“Take Me Home, Country Roads”)
The entirety of “Take Me Home, Country Roads” sees Denver describe nature in a deeply devoted way. In fact, he is so moved by what he is seeing that it brings a tear to his eye. Blue water and dusty skies are enough to move Denver in the deepest way possible.
3. You fill up my senses / Like a night in a forest / Like the mountains in springtime / Like a walk in the rain / Like a storm in the desert / Like a sleepy blue ocean (“Annie’s Song”)
The lines above may not be Denver’s most detailed lyrics, but they paint a picture in the listener’s mind nonetheless. One can almost feel the dense air of a forest at night and breathe in the clean air of a mountain in springtime. Denver somehow manages to bottle up the feeling one gets while out in nature: clear-headed, inspired, and comforted.
(Photo by Tony Russell/Redferns)
FYI Country Roads mostly written by Bill Danoff..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_Me_Home,_Country_Roads
“Inspiration for the title line had come while Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff, who were married, were driving along Clopper Road in Montgomery County, Maryland to a gathering of Nivert’s family in Gaithersburg, with Nivert behind the wheel while Danoff played his guitar. “I just started thinking, country roads, I started thinking of me growing up in western New England and going on all these small roads,” Danoff said. “It didn’t have anything to do with Maryland or anyplace.”[7]” Of the commune members, Danoff remarked, …”They brought their dogs and were a very colorful group of folks, but that is how West Virginia began creeping into the song.” While the song was inspired by Danoff’s upbringing in Springfield, Massachusetts, he “didn’t want to write about Massachusetts because [he] didn’t think the word was musical.”[8] **When Danoff and Nivert ran through what they had of the song they had been working on for about a month, planning to sell to Johnny Cash, Denver decided he had to have it, which prompted them to abandon plans for the sale.[10] The verses and chorus were still missing a bridge, so the three of them went about finishing.