Sing a Rainbow

History & Origin

"I Can Sing a Rainbow" was written by Arthur Hamilton and first recorded in 1955 for the film "Pete Kelly's Blues". It subsequently entered the children's repertoire, where it has remained ever since, its gentle melody and bright imagery making it well suited to nurseries, playgroups, and primary school music lessons.

The song's central idea — that colours can be sung, that the eyes can listen — is a small piece of synaesthesia for children, encouraging them to think across the boundaries of their senses. "Listen with your eyes" is not literally true, but it is imaginatively true: the act of looking carefully at colour, at the world, is a form of attention that is not unlike the attention one brings to listening to music.

The colours listed — red, yellow, pink, green, orange, purple, blue — do not follow the standard optical spectrum (which runs from red through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), but they are the colours that feel most vivid and joyful to children. Pink is not in the rainbow, but it belongs in a song about colour in the way that it belongs in a child's drawing: simply because it should be there.

Our arrangement gives the song the warm, quiet colour it deserves.