The lyric from “What a Wonderful World” finishes with “you.” The line links the natural images of green trees and red roses to a personal dedication.
Louis Armstrong recorded the best-known version of the song, which was released in 1967. The song was written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss. Its gentle arrangement and Armstrong’s warm, gravelly voice helped turn a simple catalogue of everyday beauty into an international standard.
The song celebrates ordinary sights and human relationships: trees, roses, skies, babies, friends, and people learning to live together. Although it became associated with optimism, its recording emerged during a period marked by social tension and political conflict in the United States. The hopeful tone was therefore especially deliberate.
A frequent mistake is attributing the songwriting to Armstrong. He made the definitive recording famous, but Thiele and Weiss wrote the composition. “What a Wonderful World” initially performed better in the United Kingdom than in the United States, where it later gained renewed attention through films, television, and reissues.