<P> The song reached the Top 40 again in 2009, sung by Kris Allen in the 8th season of American Idol . </P> <P> Withers was inspired to write this song after watching the 1962 movie Days of Wine and Roses . He explained, in reference to the characters played by Lee Remick and Jack Lemmon, "They were both alcoholics who were alternately weak and strong . It's like going back for seconds on rat poison . Sometimes you miss things that weren't particularly good for you . It's just something that crossed my mind from watching that movie, and probably something else that happened in my life that I'm not aware of ." </P> <P> For the song's third verse, Withers had intended to write more lyrics instead of repeating the phrase "I know" 26 times, but then followed the advice of the other musicians to leave it that way: "I was this factory worker puttering around," Withers said . "So when they said to leave it like that, I left it ." </P> <P> Withers, then thirty - one years old, was working at a factory making toilet seats for 747s at the time he wrote the song . On the American Top 40 program of November 6, 1976, Casey Kasem reported that when the song went gold, the record company presented Withers with a golden toilet, marking the start of his new career . "Ain't No Sunshine" was the first of Withers' three gold records in the U.S. </P>

Ain't no sunshine number of i knows