Most of us would cringe at some of our ideas and things we wrote when we were still teenagers in high school, but not Kenny Loggins, who wrote one of his most memorable love songs when he was a 17-year-old high school student. The song would later help him land a songwriting deal that helped pay for his rent as he forged a career in Los Angeles.
Indeed, what started as a highly personal gift to his older brother later blossomed into a staple of the soft rock love song canon, touching the hearts of millions and inspiring a Grammy Award-nominated cover.
The Danny Behind Kenny Loggins’ “Danny’s Song”
Kenny Loggins first featured “Danny’s Song” on an album by Gator Creek, a band he was in with a group of other studio musicians. Later, he collaborated on the song again with Jimmy Messina, and the duo included the cut on their 1971 debut album ‘Loggins and Messina.’ But despite the song’s multiple iterations, “Danny’s Song” was a deeply personal track about one specific moment—or, better yet, certain people—in Loggins’ life.
People smile and tell me I’m the lucky one, Loggins begins the song. And we’ve just begun; think I’m gonna have a son. He will be like she and me, as free as a dove, conceived in love, sun is gonna shine above. Then, Loggins moves onto the chorus, which is the most recognizable part of the track: And even though we ain’t got money, I’m so in love with you, honey, and everything will bring a chain of love.
“A lot of the lyric is taken, rephrased, from a letter [my brother, Dan] wrote me when he and [his wife], Sheila, were deciding to move to Berkeley just after their son, Colin, was born,” Loggins told Rolling Stone in 2012. “He talked about the baby, and that they were going to Berkeley with no money at all, starting fresh.” The 17-year-old Loggins was nearing the end of his high school career at the time, and he wrote the song for Dan as a gift.
Loggins’ Version Of The Love Song Wasn’t The Most Famous
In a 2021 interview with Rock History Music, Loggins said “Danny’s Song” was the “first real song that I wrote. I always knew that that was an important song. My joke is that it always got me laid, which it did not,” he said with a laugh. “I was way too shy. But…it served me well.” Loggins said the song helped him land a songwriting deal with Wingate, which paid him $100 a week—enough to pay for his $65 monthly rent in L.A.
And while lovers of soft rock would likely recognize Loggins and Messina’s version of “Danny’s Song” readily, this version wasn’t the one that would achieve the most commercial success. One year after Loggins and Messina released their eponymous debut, Canadian country-pop star Anne Murray released her own version on an album of the same name.
The song instantly achieved more success than the Loggins/Messina or Gator Creek versions ever did, skyrocketing to the Billboard Top 10 in 1973 and earning her a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 1974. (She ultimately lost to Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly With His Song.”)
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