"Top of the World" is a contemporary folk-country song written by Patty Griffin and most known as recorded and performed in Grammy Award-winning fashion by the Dixie Chicks.

Griffin wrote and recorded "Top of the World" for her would-be 2000 album Silver Bell. But a dispute with her label A&M Records caused the album to go unreleased and Griffin to be dropped, although copies of Silver Bell circulated and increased Griffin's reputation as a songwriter within the music industry.

The Dixie Chicks, who had already treated other Griffin songs and had toured with Griffin on their 2000 Fly Tour, recorded "Top of the World" as the concluding track on their 2002 album Home. Beginning quietly with Home's mixture of acoustic stringed instruments, and with the vocal line shifting around among one-, two-, and three-part singing, the song begins by portraying an almost unbearable level of regret at things not done:

Tension is built up with pauses, then midway through a string section begins accompanying in an ominous fashion. The reason for the regret is fully unveiled:

The strings then pick up in intensity during the instrumental coda, as Chicks lead singer Natalie Maines moans wordlessly and then repeats "To the top of the world" as a mantra over and over.

Dixie Chick Emily Robison said of "Top of the World" that it was "biggest departure on the album, but I'm so glad that we did it because I think it shows a whole other dimension." During their 2002 concert film An Evening with the Dixie Chicks, Maines attempted to explain the song's startingly unusual perspective:

It is written from the point of view of a man who has passed on, and he's sort of looking down wishing that he had been a different person, and having a lot of regrets and wishing he hadn't had the negative effect on the people in his life and err... I don't know what I just said...

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