Gordon Lightfoot Book, Music and More!

Neil Young returned to the city of his birth in 1965, determined to break into Toronto’s flourishing music scene. He’d arrived with his Winnipeg group, the Squires, but their new folk-rock sound fell on deaf ears. Even changing their name to Four to Go failed to make a difference. So Young parted ways with his bandmates and launched himself as a solo folksinger. Before leaving Winnipeg, Young had become enamored of Bob Dylan’s music and taught himself to play “Four Strong Winds,” Ian Tyson’s Canada-referencing response to “Blowin’ in the Wind.” He’d also encountered Joni Mitchell, who was performing at the Fourth Dimension coffeehouse with her husband. After the show, Young went up to Joni, ...

The sensitive rapper toughens up on his latest. “I’ve got enemies,” he admits on “Energy.” Drake then takes shots at his adversaries on dark tracks like “No Tellin’” and “Used To.” But his vulnerability shines through on “You and the 6,” where he confesses that his mother and his hometown of Toronto “raised me right.”

The Toronto rapper and singer has never been shy about his feelings his hometown or the women in his life. Both subjects dominate Drake’s eclectic fourth studio album, originally to be called Views from the Six in reference to his beloved Toronto. The cover shows him sitting atop the CN Tower. Then there’s “Weston Road Flows” and “9,” where he claims to have flipped Toronto on its head. While he’s unequivocal about his hometown, his relationships with women are less certain. On the island-flavored “Too Good,” his “he-said-she-said” collaboration with Rihanna, he complains, “You take my love for granted, I just don’t understand it.” On “Pop Style,” he worries that he simply “can’t trust nobod...

Like actors who get typecast by roles, musicians can become stereotyped by songs—just ask Dan Hill. The Canadian singer shot to fame in 1977 when his composition “Sometimes When We Touch” topped the international charts and earned him a reputation as an overly sensitive artist. Although he went on to record a wide range of material, the Grammy- and Juno Award-winning musician was forever pegged as that guy whose honesty was, for a lot of people, simply too much. Undaunted, Hill continued writing hit songs—many of them for the likes of Céline Dion, Britney Spears, Michael Bolton and George Benson. His writing also took a literary turn when I Am My Father’s Son, his tell-all memoir about his c...

He was an unlikely pop star of the post-Woodstock era. Clean-shaven and pipe-smoking, with short, clipped hair and a preference for cardigans and safari jackets, he looked more advertising executive than hip musician. But Canada’s R. Dean Taylor was always determined to make it in the entertainment world. Venturing to Detroit in the early 1960s, he landed himself a job at Motown and became an anomaly – a white songwriter at a black rhythm-and-blues record label. Like many session singers and musicians, it seemed Mr. Taylor was forever destined to be just another background player, standing in the shadows of Motown. That changed when his song “Indiana Wants Me” catapulted him to stardom. Afte...