Credit: Far Out / Spotify
Mon 19 October 2026 4:00, UK
Few songwriters can say their work has been performed by a cardboard box.
In 2017, Amazon sent a fleet of singing parcels across our screens, merrily belting out a song about generosity while presumably en route to someone’s doorstep with next-day delivery. The irony of a group of parcels pleading for human connection is not lost on me, but Supertramp’s ‘Give a Little Bit’ has a far richer history than a Christmas advert.
Some 40 years earlier, in 1977, it opened Supertramp’s fifth album, Even in the Quietest Moments…, and sounded like it had been left behind by the decade before. With its chiming acoustic guitar and plainly spoken plea for kindness, it was also, in a sense, a time capsule.
Roger Hodgson wrote ‘Give a Little Bit’ in 1970 but then took five or six years to bring it to the band. On the process of its creation, he noted, “I saw that the world needed love”. Drummer Bob Siebenberg remembered hearing the song in hotel rooms, a work in progress on a little tape that Hodgson carried around since before Siebenberg joined: “I was quite familiar with the tune. We tried out various drum things, and it seemed right to ride it along on the snare drum… giving it something almost like a train beat.”
The idea behind it came from the hippie counterculture movement of the 1960s, and specifically from The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’. Hodgson has described the era as “very idealistic”, a time of hope in which the dream of the decade was “still very alive”, so the song’s simplicity was deliberate, or at least not self-conscious, thanks to Hodgson, who said it was written at a time when writing simple songs came easily because he “didn’t overthink them”.
Released as a single in 1977, it climbed to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 29 in the UK. Industry publications were quick to sing its praises, with some comparing the vulnerability of the lead vocal to Peter Gabriel’s work. The song has similarly worked well with contemporary audiences, with critics ranking it the best Supertramp song of all and deeming it “a singalong paean to the Golden Rule”.
Charities too embraced it, and Hodgson has been generous in granting the rights for fundraising and disaster relief, most notably when the song was used after Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunami. “I’m very, very happy to lend it to any worthwhile fundraising,” he said. However, one of the more poignant performances of the song came on July 1st, 2007, at the Concert for Princess Diana at Wembley Stadium; it was reportedly a favourite of the late royal.
Further reading: From The Vault
Hodgson still closes his shows with the song, and he knows what to expect. “I look out, and people just start smiling straight away,” he said, “Sometimes they hug each other, and they start singing with me. It’s a very unifying song with a simple message that I’m very proud of and really enjoy playing today.”
Nearly half a century on, that must be the song’s real achievement. What began as the idealistic scribbling of a teenager inspired by the Summer of Love has outlasted many of the tracks that inspired it.
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