Sitting on Top of the World

“Sitting on Top of the World” (also “Sittin’ on Top of the World”) is a country blues song written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon. They were core members of the Mississippi Sheiks, who first recorded it in 1930. Vinson claimed to have composed the song one morning after playing at a white dance in Greenwood, Mississippi. It became a popular crossover hit, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. “Sitting on Top of the World” has become a standard of traditional American music. The song has been widely recorded in a variety of different styles – folk, blues, country, bluegrass, rock – often with considerable variations and/or additions to the original verses. The lyrics of the original song convey a stoic optimism in the face of emotional setbacks, and the song has been described as a “simple, elegant distillation of the Blues”. In 2018, it was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”. The title line of “Sitting on Top of the World” is similar to a well-known popular song of the 1920s, “I’m Sitting on Top of the World”, written by Ray Henderson, Sam Lewis and Joe Young (popularized by Al Jolson in 1926). However, the two songs are distinct, both musically and lyrically. Similarities have also been noted between “Sitting on Top of the World” and an earlier song by Tampa Red. Lyrically, “Sitting on Top of the World” has a simple structure consisting of a series of rhyming couplets, each followed by the two-line chorus. The structural economy of the song seems to be conducive to creative invention, giving the song a dynamic flexibility exemplified by the numerous and diverse versions that exist. The song has a strophic nine-bar blues structure. Bar nine provides rhythmic separation between stanzas, the end of one stanza and the relatively large pickup at the beginning of the next.