Cat Stevens · 1972 · Behind the Songs
Morning Has Broken, as recorded by Cat Stevens, was included on his album Teaser and the Firecat (1971) and released as a single in 1972.
Morning Has Broken, as recorded by Cat Stevens, was included on his album Teaser and the Firecat (1971) and released as a single in 1972. The song began much earlier as a Christian hymn, with words by English author Eleanor Farjeon, first published in 1931, set to the traditional Scottish Gaelic tune known as Bunessan. Stevens did not write the words or the tune. He made them his own through arrangement and performance.
Stevens recorded his version in March 1971 at Morgan Studios in London, with Paul Samwell-Smith producing and Rick Wakeman arranging and playing piano. The piano introduction is the key to the recording. It is bright, flowing, and unhurried, and it turns an old hymn into a morning song for a new generation. Stevens’s vocal follows the piano, gentle and clear, and the arrangement changes key as it moves through the verses, giving the song a sense of light increasing.
In his career, Morning Has Broken showed how Stevens could take material from outside his own writing and still make it personal. He treated the hymn with respect, keeping its sense of thanks for a new day, while giving it the folk-pop sound of his early 1970s albums. It became closely identified with him, even though its origins lay decades before he recorded it.
Listening now, the song feels like a fresh start, repeated every morning. It does not argue. It simply notices light, birdsong, and a new day, and invites the listener to do the same.
