On this day (September 16) in 1974, John Denver was at No. 1 on the Billboard Top Country Albums Chart with Back Home Again. The LP also reached the top of the Billboard 200. Additionally, it has since been certified 3x Platinum by the RIAA. A pair of smash hit singles helped its sales.
More than a huge hit album, Back Home Again was packed with great songs. Its two singles–the title track and “Annie’s Song”–were both hits on multiple charts. “Annie’s Song” reached No. 9 on the country chart and topped the Hot 100 and adult contemporary surveys. The title track went to No. 1 on the country and AC charts and landed at No. 5 on the Hot 100. Both were also certified Gold by the RIAA.
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While those were the only singles released from the album, they weren’t the only hits on Back Home Again. The LP also contains the original recording of “Thank God I’m a Country Boy.” Denver released a live version of the song as a single from An Evening with John Denver in 1975. It topped the country and Hot 100 charts and peaked at No. 5 on the adult contemporary chart. It also went to No. 1 in Yugoslavia and on multiple charts in Canada.
John Denver Paid Tribute to His Then-Wife
Back Home Again contained two major nods to John Denver’s then-wife Ann Martell. First, she appears on the cover alongside Denver. Then, there’s “Annie’s Song.”
According to Songfacts, the couple had just gone through a separation and gotten back together when Denver wrote the song. It came together in about ten minutes while he was riding a ski lift in Aspen, Colorado.
[RELATED: On This Day in 1975, John Denver Was at No. 1 With a Song Penned by a Bar Band Guitarist]
“Suddenly, I’m hypersensitive to how beautiful everything is. All of these things filled up my senses, and when I said this to myself, unbidden images came one after the other,” Denver wrote in his autobiography. “All of the pictures merged, and I was left with Annie. That song was the embodiment of the love I felt at the time.”
Featured Image by David Warner Ellis/Redferns
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