Cat Stevens’ Dawn Prayer: Morning Has Broken Awakens the Soul – A Gentle Hymn of Gratitude for Life’s New Beginnings
In April 1972, Cat Stevens released “Morning Has Broken” as a single from his album Teaser and the Firecat, and it climbed to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100, a serene standout that also hit number 9 in the UK, earning gold status with over a million sales. For those of us who greeted the ‘70s with open hearts—spinning vinyl on a bedroom floor or catching it on a crackling AM station—it was a song that felt like sunlight spilling through a window, soft and sacred. Now, in the stillness of 2025, as I listen again, it’s a fragile thread to a time when music could hush the world’s noise and Cat Stevens, with his tender voice and poet’s soul, was our guide through mornings both literal and longed-for.
The story of “Morning Has Broken” stretches back beyond Stevens, to a 1931 hymnal penned by Eleanor Farjeon, set to the Gaelic tune “Bunessan.” Cat, born Steven Georgiou, stumbled across it in his early 20s, a seeker already weaving folk and faith into songs like “Peace Train”. By 1971, fresh off Tea for the Tillerman’s acclaim, he was crafting Teaser, and this hymn called to him—a chance to honor the divine in the everyday. Recorded at Morgan Studios in London with producer Paul Samwell-Smith and Rick Wakeman’s delicate piano (a favor from the Yes maestro), it was a spontaneous gift—Stevens layering his voice over Farjeon’s words, tweaking them just enough to make them his own. Released as the world reeled from war and Woodstock’s afterglow, it landed like a quiet prayer, a balm for souls craving peace.
The meaning of “Morning Has Broken” is a whisper of wonder—it’s about waking to a world reborn, each dawn a miracle kissed by creation’s hand. “Praise with elation, praise every morning,” he sings, and it’s less a sermon than a sigh of awe—at the blackbird’s song, the dew on the grass, the light that “returns in its splendor.” For those of us who heard it then, it was the sound of Sunday mornings with coffee brewing, of barefoot walks through dew-soaked fields, of a time when we still believed the day could heal what the night had bruised. It’s not loud or demanding—it’s intimate, a moment of stillness that asks you to look, really look, at the beauty we too often rush past. That melody, lilting and pure, cradles a hope as old as the hills it echoes.
Cat Stevens was a troubadour of the human spirit, and “Morning Has Broken” became his signature—a bridge from folk to the sacred, outselling even “Wild World” in its gentle way. It followed Teaser’s rise to number 2 on the Billboard 200, a testament to his reign before his 1977 conversion to Yusuf Islam paused his pop path. I remember it drifting from a neighbor’s porch, or humming it on a school bus, the way it made even the greyest days feel golden. For older listeners now, it’s a lantern to 1972—of bell-bottoms and braided hair, of a world waking up to itself, of a voice that sang us into the light. “Morning Has Broken” remains a gift—a soft hymn from a man who saw the dawn and shared it, leaving us forever grateful for the mornings we’ve known.