Review

November, 11th 2016

It is the creation of John Denver, a singer and a songwriter of USA origin that wrote it in 1973 and recorded it a year later. The essence of this song is an ode to his beloved wife as a composition of a bunch of internal thoughts he had to her that time. According to his wife’s words, they went through certain difficulties that made them happy and the only reason that made John do that song were deep feelings inside that he wanted to give the world.
This song became the numerous number ones and entered in top tens of charts in the years of release. In the UK, it became known thanks to the cover of it made by Finnish HIM's songwriter Ville Valo. In his version, this cover was renamed as ‘Olet mun kaikuluotain.’ Despite that, the original was fantastically popular in the US the same year. Since the original version occurred, many covers were made on it: Glen Campbell’s 1995 version, ‘Me First And The Gimme Gimmes’ band did it in 2006, folklore singers ‘Honey Ryder’ covered in 2012, another British guy did in 2009. Besides of being a part of the totally music world, it has been altered in lyrics by UK football fans.
As of today, there are at least three languages on which the song was sung – English (original), Finnish and Czech (covers).
Ireland, the US, the UK, and Canada embraced this song allowing it to become number one in their charts. Somewhere it held for 2 weeks, in other places – only 1 week.
John Denver was an outstanding person, who succeeded the most as the solo singer in the genres of folk, pop, country, western, and folk pop. He died relatively young, only 53, and the reason of death was a plane crash (that is why most people reasonably afraid flying planes as the insecure means of transportation).
During his extensive career, he made almost 40 albums (if not to count the 17 compilations), not mentioning about 44 separate singles that weren’t included on any album. The 1970-ies, the period of time when this song was released also, were for him the most successful – he released 11 albums and several of them reached top positions in charts (Rocky Mountain High, top 1 in Canada, and #4 in the US; Back Home Again, embracing this song, Windsong – number 1 in the US and Canada; Spirit, number 3 in the US; and Poems, Prayers & Promises, number 6 in the US).
The idea of the entire composition in lyrics came to a singer when he skied from the Ajax Mountain in Aspen. The original musical arrangement of the song was extremely similar to one amongst Tchaikovsky's symphonies, according to memories by his friend, and that made a maker to redo it, which he did in just an hour or so on the home piano, where everything was changed after the re-arranging. They all – a friend, composer’s wife and a composer himself – were extremely satisfied with such a rapid work on this creation. And the charts of it approve the high quality of this brainchild.
As for the genre of the song and its lyrics, it is as follows. A song is a fusion of country and a folk rock, with the predominance of soothing motifs that lead to tranquility and exuberance of warm feelings. The lines of lyrics all the time underline what a singer feels towards his wife, as he keeps making parallels between her, and the main elements of nature (mountains, rain, desert, ocean). Then, he describes what he would do – drowned in the laughter of hers, died in her arms, laid down beside her, and would let her love to cover him over and over again. We aren’t sure what happened that they separated with wife later in the life way, but this is definitely one of most tender things towards love and the own second half. Reference: Find more info about Annie's Song, John Denver , John Denver discography and Ville Valo on Wikipedia