Lyrics to
I Guess He’d Rather Be In Colorado

Released by John Denver in 1971
From the Album: Poems, Prayers And Promises |

This version of I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado was released by John Denver in 1971.

Our About John Denver page at Decade Lyrics includes the lyrics for I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado from 1971 as well as all of the other lyrics from John Denver that we have in our lyrics database.

Here's more interesting things in songs and lyrics tied to John Denver or about the 1970s in general.

It’s kind of obvious that John Denver was in love with Colorado. To start with, his chosen “professional” last name is Denver, the most populated & popular city in the entire state. Even though his last name is really Deutschendorf, Jr., John chose “Denver” for his stage name.  Places like Wikipedia even mention his official love of Colorado when talking about his personal life and early career.

John Denver maintained a squeaky-clean image for most of his career, with the exception of a few drunk driving arrests. Even marijuana smokers were a little turned off by his folksy clean image until Rocky Mountain High came out, where confusion about the song’s meanings drove pot smokers to buy the album. The irony is that John Denver would probably go for CBD seeds from coloradocbdseed.com before he would ever be buying legal marijuana in the state.

John Denver lived in Aspen for a large amount of his life, and he was named poet laureate of the state of Colorado in 1974. His famous song, Rocky Mountain High, was named 1 of the state’s two official songs in 2007. He’s also racked up a state official song with West Virginia for Take Me Home, Country Roads in 2014.

Here’s the lyrics to I Guess He’d Rather Be In Colorado by John Denver:

I guess he’d rather be in Colorado.
He’d rather spend his time out where the sky looks like a pearl after the rain.
Once again I see him walking, once again I hear him talking
to the stars he makes and asking them the bus fare.

I guess he’d rather be in Colorado.
He’d rather play his banjo in the morning when the moon is scarcely gone.
In the dawn the subway’s coming, in the dawn I hear him humming
some old song he wrote of love in Boulder Canyon. I guess he’d rather be in Colorado.

I guess he’d rather be in Colorado.
I guess he’d rather work out where the only thing you earn is what you spend.
In the end up in his office, in the end a quiet cough is all he has to show,
he lives in New York City. I guess he’d rather be in Colorado.


Want more lyrics and songs by John Denver?

John Denver has released many songs over the years besides I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado. John Denver released songs from 1969 to 1998 spanning across albums like Rhymes And Reasons, Take Me To Tomorrow, Whose Garden Was This?, Poems, Prayers And Promises, Aerie, Rocky Mountain High, Farewell Andromeda, Back Home Again, Rocky Mountain Christmas, An Evening With John Denver, Windsong, Spirit, I Want To Live, A Christmas Together, John Denver, Autograph, Some Days Are Diamonds, Seasons Of The Heart, Rocky Mountain Holiday, It's About Time, Dreamland Express, One World, Higher Ground, The Flower That Shattered The Stone, Christmas, Like A Lullaby, Different Directions, All Aboard!, and Forever, John. Decade Lyrics has over lyrics & songs by John Denver.

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About Lyrics and I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado by John Denver

When you decide to study the lyrics to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado, you're looking at the words, verses and background chorus from the 1971 song by John Denver. Some of the lyrics to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado have clear meanings and some contain metaphorical references. Like most songs, only John Denver and their collaborators know the full story behind any of the their songs.

You can understand the lyrics to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado if you take apart the structure of the words. The word "lyric" itself derives from the Latin word lyricus, with the actual English word lyrics applied to the definition "words set to music" listed in Stainer and Barrett's 1876 Dictionary of Musical Terms. Continuing the chain, the Latin word lyricus derives from the Greek word λυρικός or lyrikós. This somewhat means "poetry accompanied by the lyre" or "words set to music." You can easily see that by looking at the background of the word lyric, that the "lyrics to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado" means the words set to the music of I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado, or poetry accompanied by the lyre played by John Denver. The singular form "lyric" is still used to mean the complete words to a song. However, the singular form lyric is also commonly used to refer to a specific line (or phrase) within a song's lyrics. Hence, by this analysis of word structure, you could say that the lyric to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado and the lyrics to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado are both one and the same thing. None of this talk about the word Lyrics is really relevant to fans of John Denver who came here looking just for the lyrics to I Guess He’D Rather Be In Colorado, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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