Everything I Own

By 1972, Bread had settled into a lineup of David Gates, Jimmy Griffin, Mike Botts, and Larry Knechtel, who had replaced founding member Robb Royer the year before. The Los Angeles soft rock band had already placed a string of songs on the Billboard Hot 100, and Gates wrote "Everything I Own" for their album Baby I'm-a Want You. The single reached No. 5 in the United States and Canada, No. 12 in Australia, and Billboard ranked it the No. 52 song of 1972.

Many listeners heard it as a song about a broken relationship, but Gates later explained that he wrote it in memory of his father, who died in 1963, before Gates found success with the band. At the funeral, a friend told him that his father had been proud of what he was doing. Gates said his success would have been special to his father, who was his greatest influence, so he decided to write and record the song about him. He pointed to lines like "You sheltered me from harm, kept me warm" as saying it all.

The title came from an earlier moment. Gates once sent his mother an orchid for her birthday when he could barely afford it, and she was so touched that his father wrote to say he could have had anything she owned in return. Gates usually wrote lyrics after the music, and though the words were crafted so the song could pass as a love song, his wife knew immediately who it was about. She cried when he played it for her.