Singer John Denver was a huge star through the 1980s and 1990s topping the charts and finding success as an actor too.
While Denver wrote many of his big hits like Annie’s Song, Take Me Home Country Roads, Rocky Mountain High, and Sunshine on My Shoulder, he also recorded many songs by other writers.
In 1981 he released his fifteenth studio album Some Says are Diamonds, the album taking it’s name from the first cut on the record Some Days Are Diamonds (Some Days Are Stone).
The song was written by Deena Kaye Rose, who at the time had yet to transition gender and come out as a trans woman. Rose had recorded the song herself but it had failed to chart, Denver had much more success with the tune taking it to the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart.
Decades after the song was recorded, and years after Denver’s tragic 1997 death, Rose shared that song was really about her struggles with gender.
In a 2016 interview the songwriter shared that she felt that, being in the music industry, she often had to hide her desired identity from the music community, and respectively used the images of diamonds and stone to reflect her feminine and masculine sides.
Once you know the inspiration of the song, it’s message about experiencing gender dysphoria is easy to see in the lyrics.
“Now the face that I see in my mirror, more and more is a stranger to me, more and more I can see there’s a danger, in becoming what I never thought I’d be.” the lyrics read.
Denver wasn’t the only big star to record a version of the song, Julie Andrews also included the song on her 1982 album Love Me Tender.
The background of the song was highlighted on a recent episode of the podcast Hit Parade hosted by music journalist Chris Molanphy. The two-part episode compared the career trajectories of John Denver and Olivia Newton-John, both who were outsiders to the country music establishment when their careers began.
Aside from this song Deena Kaye Rose also wrote songs recorded by Johnny Cash, Tex Williams, as well as several songs on the soundtrack to the iconic film Smokey and the Bandit.
