I remember learning Annie’s Song on keyboard in my youth. I was completely swept up in it, and the melody never grew old to me. My favourite chords arrive in the second line – even now, when I sing it back, they still send chills down my spine, leaving me hanging in a state of wonder.
Annie’s Song is such a beautiful love song. It is sensorial and delicate, and its allusions to nature feel akin to a Robert Frost poem. Yet it is also fleeting – like a brush of wind – here one moment and gone the next, as if Annie herself has just passed us by: a silhouette in a white nightgown, moonlight glowing behind her. Denver paints her as an almost mystical figure of the forest, capturing the feminine spirit of nature as it envelops his own.
The following was abridged from the Wiipedia article below:
Denver wrote it as an ode to his first wife – Annie Martell Denver in January 1973. It was written in about ten-and-a-half minutes one day on a ski lift to the top of Aspen Mountain in Aspen, Colorado, as the physical exhilaration of having “just skied down a very difficult run” and the feeling of total immersion in the beauty of the colours and sounds that filled all senses inspired him to think about his wife.
Annie Denver recalls the beginnings: “It was written after John and I had gone through a pretty intense time together and things were pretty good for us. He left to go skiing and he got on the Ajax chair on Aspen mountain and the song just came to him. He skied down and came home and wrote it down… Initially it was a love song and it was given to me through him and yet for him it became a bit like a prayer.“
Annie’s Song was released as the lead single from his eighth studio album Back Home Again and was his second number-one song in the United States, occupying that spot for two weeks in July 1974. The song also went to number one in the United Kingdom, where it was Denver’s only major hit single.
[Chorus]
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
You fill up my senses, come fill me again
[Verse]
Come let me love you, let me give my life to you
Let me drown in your laughter, let me die in your arms
Let me lay down beside you, let me always be with you
Come let me love you, come love me again
(Let me give my life to you
Come let me love you, come love me again)
[Chorus]
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
You fill up my senses, come fill me again
References:
1. Annie’s Song – Wikipedia
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
My aunt had a massive crush on John Denver back in the day, so I heard this song quite a bit growing up.
I wish I’d learned piano properly.
That’s funny about your aunt crush — I do wonder whether she ever reconsidered it, given how things eventually turned out – with John I mean and his problems.
I took some very beginner friendly lessons with my grandma but never stuck to it as I turned my attention to the clarinet for band.
Oh yeah, she started stepping away from him when the drugs and alcohol were becoming more and more of an issue for him. A shame.
One of the biggest regrets of my life (and I have many!) is not learning piano.
It sure looks like the clarinet worked out for you.
When Denver made a late 80’s resurgence with his beautiful love song – ‘For You’ written for his Australian wife Cassandra Delaney – I couldn’t think any higher of him. (I prefer that song over ‘Annie’s song’ actually – I’ll send it below in case you haven’t heard it).
Then that marriage eventually floundered because of domestic abuse and substance abuse allegations – it got real nasty.
I know some folks make fun of John Denver. I’ve always liked him and got a greatest hits compilation sometime in the early ’80s. It also included “Annie’s Song.”
I agree – I don’t think John’s music legacy is given its due credit. My parents had at least one record of his (probably the same you mentioned) that we wore out.
Great song. John Denver was special. Took away to soon…
PLAYED TO DEATH back in 1974. I really liked John Denver before this song came out. In fact, I liked this song until I heard it FOREVER & EVER AD NAUSEUM.
The other day, I was grocery shopping & over the PA, I heard John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy”.
I thought WHY?
WHY is it any better to be a country boy than a boy who grew up in the city?
I grew up in the country & moved to the city when I was 18. I’ve gone back & forth several times.
Country boys are generally dumbasses. City boys aren’t. Growing up on the streets give you a valuable education that you can NEVER get in the country.
When it comes to John Denver, the song I REALLY like is “Rocky Mountain High”. I’ve always had a thing for Colorado.
I did consider the played-to-nauseam factor, but enough water has passed under the bridge now that it’s hard to deny Annie’s Song its quiet greatness. It has a certain mystique to it—almost a Celtic-tinged love ballad.
The irony for me at least is ‘Country Boy’ outstayed its welcome because of exactly its saturation of the airwaves. Wow Polly, you really went to town (literally) on the Country Boy illusion in the song. I saw it always as more some banter and an excuse for a hip slapping country song.
We definitely don’t share love for his ‘Rocky Mountain High’. That line in ‘Dumb and Dumber’ when they find they’ve been going the wrong way
– ‘That John Denver is full of Sh/t, man’. lol
I couldn’t stand “Dumb & Dumber”. I have a real low threshold for stupid. There’s way too much of it in the world.
Ah shucks…I can’t get enough of that movie. It’s so smart how stupid it is. The chemistry between the two is legendary and Jeff Daniels nailed comedy. He’s so talented.
I agree about the chemistry & I adore Jeff Daniels. My son LOVED the film. You’re probably around the same age as he.
What’s amazing is how the first half of their sequel (20 years later) is actually better than the original., but it goes off the rails real fast. You seen it? Your son has good tastes haha
My son has a dual degree ~ film & English. He’s written several screenplays. He just out of the Army & he’s now a sheriff in TN. Like all of us with a family & job, he doesn’t have much time to write anymore but he gets as much writing done as he can.
His uncle was the late, great director John Patterson, best known for his work on the Sopranos. I loved John. I always joke that I hooked up with the wrong brother. John told me numerous times that I was “very photogenic” to go out to LA, he’d help me find work. I just thought he was talking ~ the way men do. But when I watched the documentary about David Chase & the production of the Sopranos, I realized that John had been on the level. Many of the actors in the Sopranos had no previous acting experience. Many of them were personal friends of Chase or one of the directors.
My son tells me all the time that I “blew it”.
It sounds like your son could write a screenplay of his own life. That’s some CV right there lol And that’s some pedigree as far as Screenwriting goes. You know I’ve never seen, not even one Gawd damn episode of The Sopranos! That’s embarrassing to admit. I know Steven Van Zandt was in it. That’s funny about your hooking up with the wrong brother. It does sound like your son’s opinion might have been on the money also -assuming he had already been born of course. Hehe.
Everybody loved John. James knew John, he was not quite 12 when John died. He was REALLY pissed at his father for not taking him to CA for the funeral.
A lot of the Sopranos is based on David Chase’s relationship with his mother ~ the character Livia in the Sopranos ~ but I know that the character Janice was based on John’s sister Susan, who changed her name to Temple when she left the house & moved out west. I think there’s also a lot of my son’s father in Janice ~ he was a beautiful man ~ in a lot of ways ~ but he was also a con. Very manipulative.
David Chase & John Patterson were best friends & worked closely on The Sopranos.
My son doesn’t carry the Patterson name ~ when he was born, I made sure that he had MY name. But I’m still close to most of the Patterson family.
That felt like a cryptic exercise—trying to decipher who the heck was who—but I appreciate the breakdown. The family interconnections, especially the links to the show, are genuinely intriguing. I think I connected the dots well enough in the end to make sense of it all. That’s cool you are still close to John’s family.
I even had to look up the original song post to work out which rabbit hole we’d actually gone scurrying down.