“Don’t You Wish It Was True” is John Fogerty’s gentle, stubborn daydream of a kinder world—sung like a smile that knows better, yet refuses to stop hoping.
When John Fogerty opened his 2007 album Revival with “Don’t You Wish It Was True”, he wasn’t just starting a tracklist—he was setting a moral temperature. This is the first song you hear on Revival (released October 2, 2007), and it arrives with the deceptively sunny bounce of classic American roots-rock: bright guitar, rolling rhythm, and a melody that feels as familiar as an old backroad. But underneath that easy motion is a question that doesn’t let you off the hook: What if tomorrow, everyone under the sun could live as one? And then the refrain—part prayer, part sigh—Lord, don’t you wish it was true.
Because you asked for rankings at release, let’s anchor the facts clearly. “Don’t You Wish It Was True” was the first single from Revival. On major Billboard singles charts, it did not register a listed peak (Fogerty’s discography shows dashes rather than chart positions for the single). The album, however, arrived with real force: Billboard reported Revival debuted at No. 14 on the Billboard 200 with about 65,000 copies in its first week. Internationally, the album charted solidly as well (for example, it’s listed at No. 33 in Australia, No. 39 in Canada, and No. 80 in the UK).
The story behind the song is wonderfully human—and it helps explain why the track sounds like it’s lit from within. Fogerty has said the song was partly inspired by his young son Josh (around three years old at the time), and that he wanted something fun and whimsical—a tune that could carry innocence without pretending the world is innocent. That’s exactly what you hear: a grown man writing with a child’s open-handed imagination, but with an adult’s awareness of how hard it is for the “wish” to become the “true.”
In the larger context, Revival itself was framed as a return—Fogerty’s first album of new material in a few years, recorded with his road-tested band in a concentrated burst (Billboard noted it was recorded in a 12-day session with players including Kenny Aronoff on drums). The record would go on to earn a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album.