“Sunshine of Your Love” by Cream

"Sunshine of Your Love" is the heaviest thing on Cream's second album, Disraeli Gears, and the song that made America sit up. It grew out of a Jack Bruce bass riff, which Bruce said came to him in desperation after a fruitless all-night writing session with Pete Brown, though Eric Clapton recalled Bruce coming up with it after a Jimi Hendrix concert. Clapton pitched in later, Ginger Baker hammers out a tribal tom-tom pattern, and Bruce and Clapton swap the vocal line by line. Felix Pappalardi produced and Tom Dowd recorded it at Atlantic Studios.

Atco didn't know what to do with it until other artists on the label vouched for it; an edited single followed, and it became Cream's first and biggest hit in the States. Hendrix played it back at them faster, as an instrumental, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame counts it among the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.