Misty taste of moonshine, teardrop in my eye

Continuing my trip up the list of the most streamed songs for each year.  

1971 : Take Me Home Country Roads - John Denver

I like this song, but can't say I listen to it very frequently (bizarrely, the last time I heard it was when it was played before The Vamps gig I went to) and I'd be surprised if anyone else does.  But I guess I've been surprised before on this list and I'm sure I'll be surprised again...

It is, however, 3:17 of homespun loveliness - it also has an impressive bridge which manages to be different and change the mood whilst still fitting in perfectly.  It is pretty cheesy though - I don't think I feel the need to listen to it more than once.  Wikipedia tells me it was initially written by married couple Bill Danoff and Taffy Nievert as a song celebrating the US landscape - at one point it was going to refer to Massachusetts but as Danoff put it "I didn't want to write about Massachusetts because I didn't think the word was musical. And the Bee Gees, of course, had a hit record called "Massachusetts", but what did I know?".  Once the song was close to completion, they planned to sell it to Johnny Cash but played it to John Denver because they were gigging together and he loved it, so helped them complete it - and the rest, as they say, is history.

It was recorded in spring '71 and slowly climbed the charts, peaking at #2 in the US - but it seems like it wasn't released over here, which makes its presence in this list all the more surprising.  The song has charted over here - a perfectly dreadful version by Hermes House Band (a Dutch pop act) got to #7 in 2001 and a perfectly fine version by Olivia Newton-John got to #15 in 1973.  The only other version Wikipedia mentions is one done for the video game Fallout 76, which is much better than you might expect.  secondhandsongs.com gives us versions by Loretta Lynn, Ray Charles, Toots & The Maytals, Val Doonican, Womack & Womack and David Hasselhoff - I can't say I'm too desperate to hear any of them.

So, what's the competition like this year?  Surprisingly (to me), the UK's best selling of the year was George Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" - it's not exactly the song with the most content.  The charts offers us a slightly more likely selection of Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline" (that's got to have been streamed a few times recently), The Rolling Stones' "Brown Sugar", Middle Of The Road's "Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" ("I" owned that at the time!) and T Rex's "Get It On" - not a huge selection.  From the US, we have Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On?" - and, errr, that's it!  I was somewhat surprised to see that the best selling US single of the year was Three Dog Night's "Joy To The World" which I don't think I've ever heard - and I wasn't aware I'd heard of them until they popped up on the previous entry.

1971 doesn't appear to have been the strongest year musically, but I'm still surprised this topped the list.  It's a perfectly fine song, but that's pretty much all it is - are there really loads of people out there streaming it?  I would have liked to see T Rex win it - but we don't always get what we want, do we?

1970 - Some fine facts about a fine track
1972 - A somewhat surprising winner which has never been released as a single