| "Everything Is Beautiful" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | ||||
| SinglebyRay Stevens | ||||
| from the album Everything Is Beautiful | ||||
| B-side | "A Brighter Day" | |||
| Released | March 1970 | |||
| Genre |
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| Length | 3:29 | |||
| Label | Barnaby | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Ray Stevens | |||
| Producer(s) | Ray Stevens | |||
| Ray Stevens singles chronology | ||||
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"Everything Is Beautiful" is a song written, composed, and performed by Ray Stevens. It has appeared on many of Stevens' albums, including one named after the song, and has become a pop standard and common in religious performances. The children heard singing the chorus of the song, using the hymn, "Jesus Loves the Little Children", are from the Oak Hill Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, this group included Stevens' two daughters.
The song was responsible for two wins at the Grammy Awards of 1971: Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Ray Stevens and Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance for Jake Hess. Stevens' recording was the Number 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in the summer of 1970. The song also spent three weeks atop the adult contemporary chart.[2] Many country stations played "Everything Is Beautiful", with it peaking at number 39 on Billboard's Country chart.[3] Billboard ranked the record as the No. 12 song of 1970. The song includes anti-racist and pro-tolerance lyrics such as "We shouldn't care about the length of his hair/Or the color of his skin."[4]
"Everything Is Beautiful" is viewed as a major departure for Stevens, as the song is a more serious and spiritual tune, unlike some of his earlier ("Gitarzan" and "Ahab the Arab") and later ("The Streak") recordings, which were comedy/novelty songs. The success of the record would allow Stevens (while still recording his comedy and novelty songs) to devote much of his 1970s work to more serious material, before pivoting back almost exclusively to comedy in the 1980s.[5]
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Year-end charts[edit]
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South African singer Jody Wayne covered "Everything is Beautiful" in early 1972. His version reached number 20 in his home nation.[12]
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