B-side "Make Believe Town" Format Vinyl single Length 3:16 | Released April 1969 Genre Folk
pop | |
Label Warner Bros.-Seven Arts | ||
"Day Is Done" is a song written by Peter Yarrow. It was recorded by Yarrow's group Peter, Paul and Mary and released as a single in 1969. The song reached No. 21 on Billboard Hot 100, and was ranked No. 48 on the Billboard year-end Top Easy Listening Singles chart of 1969.
Background
"Day Is Done" was written by Peter Yarrow in 1968, and it was the last single that Peter, Paul and Mary recorded together as a group (their last single actually released "Leaving on a Jet Plane" was recorded earlier for Album 1700 from 1967). The song was written as an anti-war song during the Vietnam War era, and Yarrow performed it as the opening song at a concert during the anti-war march he helped organized in Washington in November 1969. It became one of the well-known protest songs in the era. According to Yarrow, the message of the song is that "children will lead us to a better world".
Yarrow later released a children book based on the lyrics of the song as part of his Songbook Series. It contains a three-song CD with a version of the song he recorded with his daughter Bethany.