She Smiles Like the Sun — An adult woman smiles among glowing sunflowers at a vivid Central Valley street market washed in golden morning light

The songbook

She Smiles Like the Sun

Words by Douglas Heyes Jr. Listen to the recorded versions and follow the lyric below.

Original Doug Heyes lyrics · AI-generated music & vocals

A beloved woman's changing moods are pictured through sunlight, rain, wind, flowers and volcanic force. The portrait follows her vitality, travels and painful history without reducing her to any one of them. Her return is imagined as a desert flowering, bringing friendship, desire and the possibility of loving again.

Listen

Recorded versions

3 recordings. Different voices and arrangements bring another side of the song into the light.

Lyrics

She Smiles Like the Sun

Words by Douglas Heyes Jr

For Christina Rochelle Foster on her birthday 06.06.24

Save Lyrics as Text
SHE SMILES LIKE THE SUN

She smiles like the sun

She cries like the rain

She moves like the wind

All across the open plain

She found herself a way

To let go of her pain and

She smiles like the Sun

And she cries like the rain

She dances like nature

She sings like the Moon

She loves all the creatures

But they're all gone too soon

She teaches me to love her

When she reaches for me

She sets me on fire again

And then she sets me free

She bubbles up like lava

From underneath the crust

She races down the canyon

Like water cuz she must

She knows that ashes come to ashes

And dust will come to dust

She took her 40 lashes

And got on board the magic bus

She smiles like the sun

She cries like the rain

She moves like the wind

All across the open plain

She found a way to let go

Of her Father/Mother pain

She smiles like the Sun

And she cries like the rain

She is orchid Elegance

Ask them up in Paris, France

She set the world all sideways

All the villages and byways

Never the same as before

Electric nights on the Golden Shore

From Europe to the Farthest East

Back in the belly of the beast

But when they gathered for the feast

Like the song has always said

Was it Hotel California

Or was it the living Dead

When the song was over

They all went on their way

Scratched their heads; here's what they said

On their last and final day

They said she smiles like the sun

And she cries like the rain

She moves like the wind

When she takes away your pain

And when her love comes back again

Like a desert in the spring

You’ll have a lover and a friend

And she’ll give you everything

CODA:

She smiles like the sun

She cries like the rain

She moves like the wind

And she's coming home again

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