Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

There’s a gulf in country music as wide as the Grand Canyon. On one side is a shopping mall, full of cowboy hats, sequins and schlocky songs with a well-polished sheen. On the other is a saloon, with soaring voices, twanging guitars and songs gutsy enough to shake the shingles loose. Neko Case resides on the saloon side of country. Over the course of three impassioned studio albums and countless tours of rowdy barrooms, Case has blazed a trail across North America that left fans awestruck and critics breathlessly drawing comparisons to Patsy Cline and Loretta Lynn. Now Case has made an album that captures the unbridled emotion of her live shows. Recorded in three different venues, including ...

Boyish John Mayer bursts into the hotel room like the Sundance Kid, crouching down with pretend guns a-blazing. The cocky, playfully combative pose befits the U.S. singer-songwriter who, at 26, is already at the top of his game and riding high on newfound fame. So far, Mayer has enjoyed multi-platinum sales for his Rooms for Squares album and then saw his current album, Heavier Things, debut at number one. Meanwhile, there’s a Grammy Award on Mayer’s mantle, which he won for “Your Body is a Wonderland,” beating out his idol, Sting, and one of his biggest supporters, Elton John. Now, after opening for Sting’s European spring dates, Mayer is headlining his own major North American tour—one of ...

Gwen Stefani is sitting in her 1920s mansion, east of Hollywood, waxing breathlessly about her solo debut album, Love Angel Music Baby. “Dude, the record is so frickin’ good,” she gushes, “not in a braggy way—I’m not the only one who worked on it—but I feel like every track could be a single.” Stefani’s enthusiasm is understandable; the singer has just finished work on her much-awaited “dance record” which, by her own admission, had a difficult genesis. “I got to work with so many talented people,” she continues, referring to collaborations with such heavyweights as songwriter Linda Perry and producers like Dr. Dre and Outkast’s Andre 3000, “that I’d sometimes feel that I was drowning in the...

Mention the White Stripes and most people think of garage-rock revival groups like the Strokes and the Hives. True, the Detroit duo does owe something to the raw, three-chord tradition of 1960s’ classics like “Louie Louie” and “Wild Thing.” But the group’s tastes run much deeper, all the way back to blues artists like Son House and Blind Willie McTell, prompting some critics to describe them as a mutant blues band. Fact is, singer-guitarist Jack White and his ex-wife drummer Meg White are art-rockers—not of the King Crimson variety, but of the modernist aesthetic sort. From their name, taken from the peppermint candy and symbolizing childhood and innocence, to their use of simple musical for...

Six years is an eternity in pop music. Hits come and go. Superstars quickly fade, only to be supplanted by a new round of pop royalty. An artist who falls out of the limelight runs the risk of being quickly forgotten. Such is the transitory nature of the music world that keeping one’s hat in the ring is essential for any pop performer looking at career longevity. Sarah McLachlan needn’t worry. Although it’s been half a dozen years been since her last album, Surfacing, the Vancouver diva’s profile has remained high through remixes, charity work and her role as brainchild and den mother of the hugely successful Lilith Fair festivals. There are also good reasons why it’s taken McLachlan so long...

My 13-year-old son, Duncan, came with me to a listening session for the new Radiohead album, Hail to the Thief, organized by EMI in an IMAX theatre equipped with massive, state-of-the-art, surround-sound speakers. Duncan writes about music for a magazine called Brand New Planet, so he had a legitimate reason for attending. (In truth he was more excited about seeing a sneak preview of The Matrix Reloaded that EMI had added.) As the lights in the IMAX theatre darkened and the hypnotic groove of the opening track “2+2=5” kicked in, my son and I settled in for an accentuated aural experience. By the time he heard the dreamy, rhythmic strains of “There, There,” Duncan leaned over to me and whispe...

She’s young, gifted and black. She’s also devout, hard-working and extremely fly. As Destiny’s Child’s frontwoman and solo singer-turned actress, Knowles boasts a wealth of attributes (including bootylicious, a term she popularized and now defines) that have helped to place the Houston native well on the road to one-name multimedia stardom. Already, she’s a fast-rising screen actress, thanks to her credible work in Austin Powers in Goldmember and The Fighting Temptations, and a multiple Grammy winner as a member of Destiny’s Child. But her ambitions go much further. “I want to be the first black woman to win an Oscar, a Tony and a Grammy,” says the 22-year-old Beyoncé. “I already have three ...

She has the hooks and the looks—and depth and diversity too. Barely out of her teens, Alicia Keys may be the most sophisticated new artist working in pop music today, the anti-Britney that critics and many discerning listeners have longed for. But is she the real deal? Is she more talent than hype? And can the classically trained singer-pianist possibly live up to the daunting comparisons with her legendary, soulful predecessors? Already, Keys is off to a damn good start. Her debut album, much of which she wrote, arranged and co-produced herself, has sold more than seven million copies and won her a raft of awards, including an astonishing five Grammys. Songs in A Minor features an ambitious...

Toronto’s Music Gallery is housed in St. George the Martyr Church, on the edge of a park and a stone’s throw from Queen Street West. The tiny building, with its stained-glass windows and excellent acoustics, served as a fitting launch pad last March for Feist’s latest album, The Reminder. There, on an unseasonably mild evening, 200 invited guests sat on pews and waited for the Canadian artist’s arrival. As the lights dimmed, the anticipation was palpable. “Thanks for helping us kick off the training wheels,” said Feist, before she and her band performed 11 compositions from the album. The hour-long set served immediate notice that an important new songwriter had arrived. Of course, Feist was...

The crowded riders’ restlessness enunciates that the Guess Who suck, the Jets were lousy anyway…our Golden Business Boy will watch the North End die, and sing “I love this town,” then let his arcing wrecking ball proclaim, “I hate Winnipeg.”  “One Great City!”Lyrics by John K. SamsonMusic by the Weakerthans An alienation ballad? A protest song about duplicitous urban redevelopment? A poison-pen letter to Winnipeg’s tourism office? The Weakerthans’ “One Great City!” is all that and more. Taken from the Winnipeg band’s third album, Reconstruction Site, the folky number—with its references to gray, bitterly cold winter days and stalled cars in turning lanes—is set in the gro...