It lacks electric piano and isn’t maudlin enough, but we’ll allow it.
I don’t believe that Denver wrote the song but he did record it.
Yes, Denver wrote it in 1966, and was the first to record it as part of the Chad Mitchell Trio (Denver had replaced Mitchell).
John Denver did write Leaving on a Jet Plane. He was a songwriter first and was able to translate his success there into a recording career.
Like has been said up thread, his songs are relatable and catchy. There’s something about them that makes you feel nostalgic for the childhood you think you should have had.
I hear his stuff quite often because my husband was raised listening to his music and learning to play them on the guitar. Country Boy is a favorite of one of my sister in laws and my Grandmother would request Grandma’s Feather Bed every time she saw my husband.
The fact that with all the wonderful songs John Denver wrote that one is the one that’s internationally famous is a little baffling though. It’s always been my least favorite.
See, this is what always cracks me up about foreign takes on American music. Here, in a song about West Virginia (American East), all the imagery is of the American West (and Texas).
Then there was Sweden’s “Rednex”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddgyg_5FF_0
I quite like the band Truck Stop. German country pop. Here are some tunes.
Truck Stop - Wenn es nacht wird in Old Tucson.
Truck Stop - Der Wilde Wilde Westen
Sorry, I even speak a little German (and a little less ever day that passes) and I don’t know what song this is. So a little help? (I am truly hopeless at music, but it sounded Jimmy Buffet-like to me?)
I think the man named Weenus Chumkamnerd should look to blame his parents for his being angry as opposed to John Denver. 
Mister Rik writes:
> See, this is what always cracks me up about foreign takes on American music.
> Here, in a song about West Virginia (American East), all the imagery is of the
> American West (and Texas).
Yeah, but as I pointed out above, Americans sometimes can’t get it right either. The song has nothing to do with the actual state of West Virginia except for the fact that it mentions the state. It was written in Washington, D.C. by songwriters who knew little about West Virginia, in so far as it was inspired by anything it was a road in Maryland, and the locations mentioned by name are in Virginia. The song is so arbitrary that it’s hard to understand why any West Virginians would want to embrace it as their state song.
I’m just going to pretend that the name of that game translates to “Wheel of Upskirts”.
Pretty sure Dwight on The Office sang this song in German.
The song is “Living Next Door to Alice”. Here’s a version that’s all in English. Looking at it now that either was the source of the inserted line or it popularized it.
I also found out the clean version actually goes back to the 1970s, as sung by Smokie.
So who can we blame for this one then?
Die Lollipops - Dankeschön:
Alice? Who the fuck is Alice? 
Is there a Swedish version that extols surstromming?
The lady who owns the restaurant, where you can get anything you want, around the back, about a half mile from the railroad track.
She lives in the bell-tower, of the church.
You know, Alice!
I thought everybody knows Alice.
Then again there is the other Alice, the one with the pills. Go ask her, she’ll know.
Either the church or the pills,
it’s a big decision in a town called mAlice.
Was that intentional? I like that.
Anyway, my answer is that maybe it’s the USA that’s out-of-synch in John Denver no longer being popular. Thank God I’m a Country Boy and *Gramma’s Feather Bed *are crap (and I don’t think he wrote either one), but before that, he wrote a lot of thoughtful, if simple, stuff.
Country Roads should be vapid crap. It was written by the two leads of the Starland Vocal Band, with John Denver adding some stuff after they demo’d it for him. It was inspired by driving on roads in Montgomery County, Maryland (it borders DC. It admittedly had some country in it still in 1970, but not much). The West Virginia namechecks are more associated with Virginia, not West Virginia. Somehow, though, the song is a timeless classic.
I saw John Denver in concert in 1970 when he was just starting out as a solo act. (He was opening for Blood Sweat & Tears.) Having written “Leaving on a Jet Plane” was what he was most famous for at the time.
Bill and Taffy Danoff would later found the Starland Vocal Band, known for “Afternoon Delight.”