1970Released
3:40

Did You Know?

Interesting facts and trivia about Joy To The World. By Songfacts®.

Hoyt Axton wrote this for an animated TV special called The Happy Song that never materialized. Axton, who was a popular country singer-songwriter from Oklahoma, pitched it to the group while he opened for them on a tour. Three Dog Night also had a Top 10 hit with "Never Been to Spain," also written by Axton.

The group didn't think much of this song when they recorded it, tacking it on to the album because they needed one more song to complete it. The song ended up being a massive hit and stayed six weeks at #1 on the US Hot 100.

For the story of how this song became a runaway hit, we found the DJ who was the first to play it. The Naturally album was released in November 1970, and the first single to chart from the album was "One Man Band," which peaked at #19 US in December. "Joy To The World" was a lowly album cut, until Larry Bergman brought it to life in Seattle. Larry told Songfacts: "I was the DJ who first played 'Joy To The World' on the radio that caused it to start its journey to #1. I was working at radio station KISW-FM at the time. It was the sister station to the number one radio station in Seattle, KJR-AM. That was when AMs were more popular than FMs. My job was to select odd cuts from albums by popular artists, not necessarily their hits, and record them on tape for on-air use. I remember I needed to find one more song to fill a tape I was producing and came across Joy To The World. It was on the second side, last cut on their Naturally album. I put it on the tape and played it on the air. Within the hour the KJR DJ (Gary Shannon) came running over from the AM side and asked where I got that song. 'People were calling,' he said. I told him and he had me record it on to another tape for him. He took it and played it on KJR and within a few weeks it went to #1 in Seattle. It wasn't long after that the song reached #1 on Billboard. The station got a gold record for it and Three Dog Night came to Seattle to launch their next album."

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Song Analysis

Key, BPM (tempo) and time signature of Joy To The World.
DKey
MajorMode
4/4Time Signature
127BPM

Album

The album Joy To The World is released on.

Released By

The record label that has released Joy To The World.
Geffen*
© 1989 MCA Records Inc.
℗ 1970 UMG Recordings, Inc.

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