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"Everything Is Beautiful" is a song written, composed and performed by Ray Stevens. It has appeared on many of Stevens's albums, including one named after the song, and has become a pop standard and common in religious performances. The children heard singing the chorus of the song, using the hymn "Jesus Loves the Little Children", are from Oak Hill Elementary School in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, this group included Stevens's two daughters, Suzi and Timi.
"Everything Is Beautiful" was responsible for two wins at the Grammy Awards of 1971: Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance for Ray Stevens and Grammy Award for Best Inspirational Performance for Jake Hess. Stevens's recording was the number 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks in summer 1970. "Everything Is Beautiful" also spent three weeks atop the Adult Contemporary chart. Many country stations played "Everything Is Beautiful", with it peaking at number 39 on Billboard's Country chart. Billboard ranked the record as the number 12 song of 1970. "Everything Is Beautiful" includes anti-racist and pro-tolerance lyrics such as "We shouldn't care about the length of his hair/Or the color of his skin".
"Everything Is Beautiful" is viewed as a major departure for Stevens, as the song is a more serious and spiritual tune, unlike some of his previous ("Gitarzan" and "Ahab the Arab") and subsequent ("The Streak") recordings, which were comedy/novelty songs. The record's success allowed Stevens (while still recording his comedy and novelty songs) to devote much of his 1970s work to more serious material, before pivoting back almost exclusively to comedy in the 1980s.
