Throwing back to the week of September 27, 1975, we find John Denver atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘I’m Sorry.’
This is one of the six songs I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that topped both the Country chart and the Hot 100 that year. ‘I’m Sorry’ was the last of four chart-topping singles for Denver, all released between 1973 and 1975.
Throwing back to the week of June 7, 1975, we find John Denver atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Thank God I’m a Country Boy.’ The song hit #1 on the country chart the week before, making it one of six songs to top both charts that year (I covered another of them, Freddy Fender’s ‘Before the Next Teardrop Falls,’ just a couple of weeks ago).
This was Denver’s third #1 hit of four total in his career. All four came between 1973 and 1975. It also reached #1 in Canada and, go figure, Yugoslavia.
I want to dedicate a full week to ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ but I’ve run out of official releases, so today I leave you with a cover version by 8-year-old Thai YouTuber Gail Sophicha.
One last fun fact about this song: In the late 80s, New Order released a song called ‘Run’ which they later remixed for a 12″ single titled ‘Run 2.’ Either John Denver or his publishing company (depending on which source you read) believed ‘Run 2’ closely resembled ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ in parts. They successfully sued, preventing the re-release of the single and earning Denver songwriting credit on the track.
John Denver made the interesting decision to release a greatest hits album just four years into his solo career. To be fair, he had released seven studio albums by that time, including one just a few months earlier, but he wasn’t exactly a hit machine. Only three of his songs had reached Billboard’s top ten.
Denver re-recorded more than half of the songs, believing he had grown as an artist and a singer over the years and owed these tracks a revisit. One of those new recordings was ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane.’
Peter, Paul and Mary scored their only #1 hit with ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’ in 1969, but John Denver released his own version that year as well. Nestled on Side B of his sophomore album Rhymes & Reasons, it was one of only three original compositions on the record.
This version of the song was recently used for the opening of an episode of Barry, a dark HBO comedy starring Bill Hader as a hitman trying to succeed in Hollywood. That scene reminded me of how much I love this song and led to this theme week, so you can either thank or blame Bill Hader.
Meet Me In Montauk 