Jimmy Cliff’s ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ Becomes His First Song To Hit 100 Million Views On YouTube
Jimmy Cliff’s iconic cover of Johnny Nash’s 1972 classic I Can See Clearly Now just surpassed 100 million views on YouTube – the first of the Reggae icon’s songs to do so on the platform. Meanwhile, over on Spotify, the song had long surpassed the 100 million mark, currently sitting with over 147 million plays.
The original I Can See Clearly Now had Cliff’s imprint on it, even before his manager David Sonenberg was approached in 1993 with the opportunity for the singer to work on the cover for the soundtrack of the film Cool Runnings. Three years ago, while discussing his relationship with Johnny Nash in the wake of the American singer’s passing, Jimmy Cliff told DancehallMag that he had been intimately familiar with the track – 21 years before he would go on to do a cover of it.
“I was actually at Island Studios in London when ‘I Can See Clearly Now’ was recorded. I actually played bongo drums on the [original] track,” Cliff shared.
The 78-year-old singer, whose real name is James Chambers, also revealed that his version of the song, which is his highest charting single in the US and his third highest in the UK, almost didn’t come to be.
“The company actually wanted me to do You Can Get It If You Really Want,” Cliff recalled, “but Sonenberg said no, he wanted that song for our movie that we would be doing.”
He continued: “He suggested to them, ‘How about doing ‘I Can See Clearly Now’?’ I never told Johnny at the time I was doing it. I didn’t have to tell him as it would just go through his publishing company.”
Jimmy Cliff, whose friendship with Nash began while he had been living in London, said that the two had a bit of a reunion years after Nash’s original recording of the Gold-certified hit.
“I saw him years later after he did the original recording of ‘I Can See Clearly Now’, and he said ‘Remember we recorded the song at Island’. I said ‘You remember that?’ He said, ‘I remember that, I remember more too’, and we laughed,” he said.
Further reminiscing on that reunion, Cliff added: “Then I said, ‘I have a song for you’, and he came back at me sharp and said, ‘I have a song for you too’, like he was saying you think I can’t write songs, I can write one for you too. He was just a really very nice bredrin.”
“I met him in England years ago when I used to reside there. Danny Simms had a house in London, and we used to meet up around there and hang out and we became friends.”
In October 2020, Johnny Nash, who had been in declining health, died of natural causes at home in Houston, Texas at age 80.
His original I Can See Clearly Now reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts in 1972, helping to bring Reggae music to a mainstream audience in the United States.
Cliff’s version went to No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1994, spending a total of 25 weeks on the chart. It is ranked at No. 38 on the DancehallMag‘s list of the most streamed Jamaican songs of all time.
His previous entries on the Hot 100 chart were Wonderful World, Beautiful People, which peaked at No. 25 in 1970, and Come Into My Life, which peaked at No. 89 in 1970.
In the UK, Cliff’s I Can See Clearly Now went to No. 23 on the Singles Chart in 1994. His highest charting songs in the country are Wonderful World, Wonderful People, which peaked at No. 6 in 1969, and Wild World, which peaked at No. 8 in 1970.