EARTH SONGS WAS JOHN DENVER`S ULTIMATE VOCAL PERFORMANCE

https://youtu.be/WO64aIW00iM?si=mRA032rRe0cVuyNA

This website is about music variety, when I write about music (laugh), and in stark contrast to Gary Moore`s pyrotechnic hard rock I wanted to share with you a few obscure bootleg songs from John Denver, the Rocky Mountain man from Colorado who passed away in a light plane crash off the coast of California in 1997. 

John Denver is considered by the music establishment as being country, although a few of his songs from the 70`s like TAKE ME HOME COUNTRY ROADS were pure country, the majority of his repertoire was a mixture of folk, pop and country, even with a dash of progressive keyboard in the latter part of his career in the 90`s. 

The one album which I adore of John Denver, which I consider to be a fair compromise between country music and contemporary pop and which may raise the hairs on your back in quite a few places with all it`s spine tingling production, is his very much underated 1990 album EARTH SONGS.

An albums which re-creates many of his old songs with a modern touch and chucks in a few new gems indicating that Denver was looking to strike out in a new direction which was more about studio gloss rather than going back to his folk roots of the Kingston Trio and his output as a solo artist in the 70`s. 

The new version of COLD NIGHTS IN CANADA and EAGLE AND THE HAWK are awe inspiring and inspirational, not to mention WIND SONG. 

Try not imagining you are floating on top of a cloud overhanging the Rocky Mountains listening to this song. 

Really the whole album is a revelation even though it is mostly made up of songs which he had already recorded years earlier. 

By 1990 when John Denver had recorded this album, his life had gone from cloud nine to the depths of despair following the breakdown of his second marriage to Australian woman Cassandra Delaney, and him not having a record contract anymore.

EARTH SONGS was his first independent album following his commercial banishment, but the truth is John Denver had never sounded better, his singing was now at the top of its game. 

A couple of other songs which I want to mention which don't appear on EARTH SONGS but could be placed in the same `progressive` category are I WATCH YOU SLEEPING and IN THE GRAND WAY, the latter is sung in a different language but not sure what one it is. 

They are very melodramatic epic pieces of atmospheric pop that have absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with country music, not that I have anything against that sort of music. 

I just think it`s about time that music critics and so called experts stopped misrepresenting John Denver by putting him in the country music class. 

John Denver was John Denver, unclassifiable and definitely his own style. He created his own unique synthesis.