When I Get to Heaven - John Prine - MP3 instrumental karaoke

Late, great, sharp-witted wordsmith John Prine toiled away at the folk revival coalface for over half a decade before his death in 2020 from complications caused by COVID-19. That same year, the Illinois-born country-folk singer-songwriter received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Before shuffling off this mortal coil, John Prine had one last message to send out to the world in the form of the The Tree of Forgiveness, his eighteenth and final studio album. The prescient album was packed full of his charming humor with songs like “Knockin' on Your Screen Door” and “Crazy Bone” a testament to his zany style. Now holding great poignancy following his death, “When I Get to Heaven” describes a riotous after-party in the afterlife: “I’m gonna get a guitar and start a rock ‘n’ roll band / Check into a swell hotel / Ain’t the afterlife grand?”, he declares, evoking a lasting image of him smoking a nine-miles-long cigarette with a vodka and ginger ale in his hand.