Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from October 30, 2009

Jay Hears A Song #9 -- The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot

Happy Halloween! In honor of this auspicious holiday, I would like to talk about a song that sounds like late autumn to me -- "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" by Gordon Lightfoot. This particular Jay Hears A Song is brought to you by Anonymous,* who reminded me of this song one day, and now it's on my iPod all the time. So thank you, Anonymous (I think :) ). The thing about "The Wreck" is that it is a song that, by all rights, I should not like, but because of my own personal history with it, I do. In case you haven't heard it, it's a folk song about the wreck of a boat called the Edmund Fitzgerald**, which sank in 1975 in Lake Superior. The events surrounding the sinking are semi-mysterious*** and this mystery is what I think led in part to the song's longevity (at least to me). Let's face it--there's not much drama in "there was a big storm and a boat sank." Also, as much as I personally enjoy it, "The Wreck"?