Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

She’s only 20, but Camila Cabello’s already well on her way. When she quit Fifth Harmony, the all-female group she joined when she was just 15, Cabello stated she wanted to “open up my soul.” With her debut album, the Cuban-American singer has done just that. Produced by Canada’s Frank Dukes, the album is a confident statement of intent, featuring intimate songs about love and longing. There’s an appealing Latin tinge to several tracks, including the irresistible smash “Havana,” the bubbling “She Loves Control” and the reggaeton tune “Inside Out.” Cabello isn’t afraid to sing honestly about an old boyfriend on “All These Years” and the piano ballad “Consequences,” on which she hits Mariah Ca...

One of Gordon Lightfoot’s best-known songs was born out of a dying marriage. With its visions of wishing-well ghosts, movie queens and paperback novels, “If You Could Read My Mind” contains some of Lightfoot’s most vivid imagery. Emotionally, the lyrics stand out for their startling honesty. The words had poured out of him one afternoon in 1969, while sitting alone in an empty house. Baring his soul like never before, he’d written lines like “I don’t know where we went wrong, but the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back.” There was little doubt it was about his broken marriage. The words “heroes often fail” suggest he blamed himself for its demise, but the phrase “chains upon my feet”...

Gordon Lightfoot became a star at home during Canada’s centennial year. South of the border, he was still mostly known as the composer of hits for others, including Marty Robbins and Peter, Paul and Mary. All that changed in 1968. Why it didn’t happen earlier had a lot to do with the delayed release of the Canadian artist’s debut album, Lightfoot! Although recorded late in 1964, it didn’t appear until over a year later, by which time the folk boom had largely gone bust, thanks to the twin forces of the Beatles and an electrified Bob Dylan. Lightfoot was working hard at playing catch up, releasing The Way I Feel and touring relentlessly throughout ’67. By early the following year, the tide wa...