Lyrics to
Paradise

This version of Paradise was released by John Denver in 1972.

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When I was a child, my family would travel
down to western Kentucky where my parents were born.
There’s a backwards old town that’s often remembered, so my times that my memories are worn.
And daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.

Well sometimes we’d travel right down the Green River
to the abandoned old prison down by Adrie Hill,
where the air smelled like snakes and we’d shoot with our pistols,
but empty pop bottles was all we would kill.
And daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.

Well, the coal company came with the world’s largest shovel,
and they tortured the timber and stripped all the land.
And they dug for their coal till the land was forsaken, wrote it all down as the progress of man.
And daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.
And daddy, won’t you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
down by the Green River where paradise lay?
Well, I’m sorry, my son, but you’re too late in asking.
Mister Peabody’s coal train just hauled it away.

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John Denver has released many songs over the years besides Paradise. 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 Paradise by John Denver

The lyrics to Paradise are just the words, phrases, verses and chorus that John Denver used when the song was created in 1972. The lyrics to Paradise have both easy-to-spot meanings and hidden metaphors that have been discussed by the music press and fans, but only John Denver and any collaborators know all of the inspirations for the song.

If you like etymology or breaking apart phrases and words, it is easy to understand the lyrics to Paradise by John Denver. 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 Paradise" means the words set to the music of Paradise, 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 Paradise and the lyrics to Paradise 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 Paradise, but we feel it is still fun to learn what's behind commonly used words and lyrics in songs.

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