Songs from the heart
You know their songs. You really do. Even if they were written before you were born. For half a century, Canadian singers and songwriters have been writing the popular music of our lives. Hugely successful in Canada, these artists often went on to build international music careers. On June 29, 2007, Canada Post released a set of four domestic rate (52¢) stamps honouring four homegrown musical legends.
Try out their lyrics, and see if the music comes to mind:
“Oh, please, stay by me, Diana...” Ottawa’s Paul Anka had his first big hit with “Diana,” a tune that had teenage girls swooning in 1956. Anka went on to a long and successful singing and songwriting career in the United States.
“They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot...” That’s “Big Yellow Taxi” from 1970, one of Joni Mitchell’s best-known songs. She was a prairie girl who sang folk songs in clubs and coffeehouses before becoming an international star. She’s still considered a poet of her generation.
“The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy.” The true story of a Lake Superior shipwreck inspired one of Gordon Lightfoot’s most popular songs, the “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” in 1976, but this great Canadian folk artist wrote all kinds of stories in song.
“Spread your tiny wings and fly away…” One of Anne Murray’s biggest hits was “Snowbird” in 1969. She starred on U.S. television and recorded many other successful songs, but the girl from Springhill, Nova Scotia, remains “Canada’s Songbird.”
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