Earth Songs by John Denver

Earth Songs, John Denver's 21st studio album, appeared in June 1990, and you couldn't buy it in a shop: it was sold only by mail order and at his concerts. It's a nature record from a man whose whole career was a love letter to the outdoors, and by the '90s he was putting real effort into environmental causes.

Most of the album is Denver revisiting his own catalog, with fresh recordings made just for this set; only three of the songs were new, and two of those turned up later that year on The Flower That Shattered the Stone. That makes it a warm, acoustic retrospective with a green thread running through it, and "Rocky Mountain High", the Colorado anthem that later became one of the state's official songs, is the one the countdowns remembered.

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