Lean on Me

“Lean on Me” is a song written and recorded by American singer-songwriter Bill Withers. It was released in April 1972 as the first single from his second album, Still Bill. It was a No. 1 single on both the soul and Billboard Hot 100 charts, the latter chart for three weeks in July 1972. Billboard ranked it as the No. 7 song of 1972.

Numerous other versions have been recorded, and it is one of only nine songs to have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with versions recorded by two different artists with a 1987 cover by Club Nouveau also reaching No. 1.In 2007, the 1972 recording of the song by Bill Withers on Sussex Records was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. It was ranked No. 208 on Rolling Stone‘s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time” in 2010.

Bill Withers’s childhood in the coal mining town of Slab Fork, West Virginia, was the inspiration for “Lean on Me”, which he wrote for his album Still Bill after he had moved to Los Angeles, and found himself missing the strong community ethic of his hometown. He had lived in a decrepit house in the poor section of his town.

Withers recalled to Songfacts the original inspiration for the song:

“I bought a little piano and I was sitting there just running my fingers up and down the piano. In the course of doing the music, that phrase crossed my mind, so then you go back and say, ‘OK, I like the way that phrase, Lean On Me, sounds with this song.'”