I Remember Everything

Album: single release only (2020)
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Songfacts®:

  • "I Remember Everything" is the last song John Prine recorded before his death from COVID-19 on April 7, 2020. A quintessential Prine ode to love, it finds him recalling a romance from its beginning:

    The way you turned and smiled on me
    On the night that we first met


    To the couple's farewell:

    How I miss you in the morning light
    Like roses miss the dew
  • Prine wrote the acoustic song with longtime collaborator Pat McLaughlin. Nashville hitmaker Dave Cobb produced the track, recording it in Prine's living room with the singer accompanying himself on guitar.
  • Prine first shared "I Remember Everything" on Thanksgiving in 2018, when Cobb and some other friends were celebrating the holiday with the Prines. Released as a posthumous single in June 2020, it became the country-folk icon's first Billboard chart-topper when it debuted at #1 on the Rock Digital Song Sales tally.
  • John Prine was originally a mailman in Illinois who wrote songs as a hobby and played gigs to impress the ladies. Following his death, Prine's label asked fans to send postcards to his family, which would also help the United States Postal Service in the face of budget cuts. Directed and edited by Joshua Britt and Neilson Hubbard, the song's lyric video weaves together the postcards with footage of a man fishing alone.
  • This won for Best American Roots Song and Best American Roots Performance at the Grammy Awards in 2021. Brandi Carlile sang it at the ceremony in honor of Prine.

Comments: 2

  • Maria Nunes from Roseburg OregonI encountered John Prine at a friends house in 1973. I learned all the words and would go to work and try to sing the songs so we could sing along together. I am not a singer, but I had the idea if we could sing Sam Stone in barbershop it would become my workmates favorite tune.m we never sang it but they learned the words to some of those songs and would recite them at glorisly inappropriate times. Even years afterwords one workmate would walk up to me and begin. Those songs made me so happy.
    I collected John Prine albums but that was difficult in the places I lived. Not a lot of places to go search plus always a broke single mother.
    My 58 year old son loves John Prine and plays him regularly. I just sent him the name of a song I play often, In Spite of Ourselves.
    My husband wants to see Trump charged with John’s murder because of how he put the Covid 19 pandemic onto the American people especially on John Prine.
  • Eric from OregonThe first time I heard this song, my impression was that it was a love song from John to, well, everybody. Fiona, his fans, Americans, etc.
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