"Take Me Home, Country Roads", also known simply as "Country Roads", is a song written by Bill Danoff, Taffy Nivert and John Denver. It was released as a single performed by Denver on April 12, 1971, peaking at number two on Billboards US Hot 100 singles for the week ending August 28, 1971. The song was a success on its initial release and was certified Gold by the RIAA on August 18, 1971, and Platinum on April 10, 2017. The song became one of John Denver's most popular songs. It has continued to sell, with over 1.6 million digital copies sold in the United States. The song is considered a symbol of West Virginia. In March 2014, it became one of the four official state anthems of West Virginia. Composition Inspiration for the title line had come while Taffy Nivert and Bill Danoff, who were married, were driving along Clopper Road in Montgomery County, Maryland to a gathering of Nivert's family in Gaithersburg, with Nivert behind the wheel while Danoff played his guitar. "I just started thinking, country roads, I started thinking of me growing up in western New England and going on all these small roads," Danoff said. "It didn’t have anything to do with Maryland or anyplace." To Danoff, the lyric "(t)he radio reminds me of my home far away" in the bridge is quintessentially West Virginian, an allusion to when he listened to the program Saturday Night Jamboree, broadcast from Wheeling, West Virginia, on WWVA at his home in Springfield, Massachusetts during his childhood in the 1950s. Danoff was influenced by friend and West Virginian actor Chris Sarandon, and members of a West Virginia commune who attended Danoff's performances. Of the commune members, Danoff remarked, "They brought their dogs and were a very colorful group of folks, but that is how West Virginia began creeping into the song." While the song was inspired by Danoff's upbringing in Springfield, Massachusetts, he "didn't want to write about Massachusetts because [he] didn't think the word was musical." Starting December 22, 1970, Denver was heading the New Year's bill at The Cellar Door, with Fat City opening for him, just as Denver had opened at the same club for then headliner David Steinberg. After the club's post-Christmas reopening night on Tuesday, December 29 (Cellar Door engagements ran from Tuesday to Sunday and this booking was for two weeks), the three headed