September 15, 2023 —– Chart #211
Hello Music Friends,
Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Chart of the Week. For this blog I like to choose songs that can be played on an acoustic guitar. Not all of my favorite tunes lend themselves to this format, but many do regardless of how they were originally recorded. To use a golf analogy, today’s song is a drive right down the middle of the fairway. “If You Could Read My Mind” is a song by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. Lightfoot wrote the lyrics while he was reflecting on his own divorce. It reached No. 1 on the Canadian Singles Chart on commercial release in 1970 and charted in several other countries on international release in 1971.
Lightfoot cited his divorce for inspiring the lyrics. They came to him as he was sitting in a vacant Toronto house one summer. The song compares events in his relationship to a ghost movie and a paperback romance novel. The lyrics include “I don’t know where we went wrong. But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.”
At the request of his daughter Ingrid, he performed the lyrics with a slight change: The line “I’m just trying to understand the feelings that you lack” is altered to “I’m just trying to understand the feelings that we lack.” Lightfoot said in an interview that the difficulty with writing songs inspired by personal stories is that there is not always the emotional distance and clarity to make lyrical improvements such as the one his daughter suggested.
Personally I have been blessed with the most wonderful wife and best friend for 33 years that a song about divorce is a bit foreign to me. Just feeling these lyrics as they curl around in my brain reinforces the commitment I have to ‘til death do us part’. There is real pain in these lyrics, perhaps the reason that this song was so powerful and successful.
Here is an example of how modern artists can destroy a beautiful song. This one is by some people calling themselves “Stars on 54”: https://youtu.be/ujPza2jSUtQ?si=ciPdpTolHkl3M3JZ
On release, the song reached No. 1 on the Canadian Singles Chart and was his first recording to appear in the U.S., reaching No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in February 1971. Later in the year, it reached No. 27 on the Australian singles chart and No. 30 on the United Kingdom’s singles chart. The song also reached No. 1 for one week on the Billboard Easy Listening chart, and was the first of four Lightfoot releases to reach No. 1.
A live TV performance from the 70’s: https://youtu.be/DK–A-IaZnA?si=zqOIt2N9Lljs6tVp
In 1987, Lightfoot filed a lawsuit against Michael Masser, the composer of Whitney Houston’s hit “The Greatest Love of All”, alleging plagiarism of 24 bars of “If You Could Read My Mind”; the transitional section that begins “I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow” of the Masser song has the same melody as “I never thought I could act this way and I got to say that I just don’t get it; I don’t know where we went wrong but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back” of Lightfoot’s song.
Lightfoot stated that he dropped the lawsuit when he felt it was having a negative effect on the singer Houston because the lawsuit was about the writer and not her. He also said that he did not want people to think that he had stolen his melody from Masser. The case was settled out of court, and Masser issued a public apology.
For those scoring at home, yes I am still grieving over the loss of Jimmy Buffett, and you can expect more JB songs in future posts. Until then folks, enjoy the music. Play along, sing along, share the post.
Keep Rockin’,
Stan Bradshaw