If You Could Read My Mind

Minstrel Of The Dawn (lyrics) Me And Bobby McGee (lyrics) Approaching Lavender (lyrics) Saturday Clothes (lyrics) Cobwebs And Dust (lyrics) Poor Little Allison (lyrics) Sit Down Young Stranger (lyrics) If You Could Read My Mind (lyrics)   Baby It's Allright (lyrics) Your Love's Return (lyrics) The Pony Man (lyrics)

Buy Warner CD from Amazon.com (US)

Buy Wounded Bird (Reissue) CD from Amazon.com (US)
This is If You Could Read My Mind
re-released under its original title
... which I consider a strange marketing decision

Buy from Amazon.ca (Canada)

Breakthrough Album - One Of The Best!

If You Could Read My Mind was the breakthrough album (and single) for Gordon Lightfoot as a singer. This was his first album since switching from United Artists to Warner Brothers and what is today the title song was his first US chart single (reached #5 on Billboard).

The mix of If You Could Read My Mind on this album is actually different from the version on Gord's Gold. The latter is the mix used on the single that was released after the album, and as a result of the song's radio popularity. The single and the version on Gord's Gold have harmony vocals (by Lightfoot) which are not on this original album cut. Read more about If You Could Read My Mind (the song), or click on the note icon in the song listing above to buy the MP3.

The original title song, Sit Down Young Stranger, remains one of Lightfoot's most compelling topical ballads, and one of a handful of "anti-war" songs that he wrote back in the 60s and early 70s. If you've never heard this one - or especially if you have - the album is worth buying for just this one magnificent song!

Other outstanding songs on the album include Minstrel Of The Dawn, Lightfoot's cover of Kris Kristofferson's Me And Bobby McGee, and The Pony Man, a favorite of children of all ages.

My review title says it all: this album is one of the best!

Originally written August 6, 1998