Songfacts®:

• This is the title track and second single from the alternative-rock/hip-hop act Michael Franti & Spearhead's seventh studio album. Franti had surgery for a ruptured appendix in August 2009 which nearly killed him. During his recovery, he was thrilled to be alive and happy for the little pleasures in life, like the sun shining through his window. Every day he would open the curtain in his hospital room to check on the sun.
  
  "I thought to myself, 'If I could bottle this feeling of how good the sun feels when you're trying to heal your body, it would be amazing,'" Franti told Songfacts. "So I thought, 'Why not try to put it into a song so that I could share that experience with other people?'"
• Much of The Sound of Sunshine was recorded on the road while the group was opening for John Mayer in early 2010. "We took our little portable rig on tour with us," Franti told Billboard Magazine, "and every day we'd play the songs and then we'd go back into the dressing room and go, 'Y'know, the chorus needs a different chord change' or 'The audience wasn't dancing to it as much as when we played this one slower the other day, so we should slow down the recording.' And we would record the drums and guitars right there and I'd take the rig into my hotel room at night and I'd record the vocals all night long. So it was made in hotels and the locker rooms of NBA and hockey franchises all around the country."