CD-Charts Position 1
Average Rating:

Gordon Lightfoot - Complete Greatest Hits

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date April 02, 2002
Gordon Lightfoot is my favorite singer/songwriter of all time.
This collection is very good, but not what I would call "complete".

Where is "Song For A Winter's Night"?
What about "Cold On The Shoulder"?
Not one track from "Dream Street Rose"?

Also, many of us hardcore fans have favorites that were never "hits" (i.e. "The Watchman's Gone", "Seven Island Suite", etc.) but feel like glaring omissions in a Gord's "greatest" collection.

Maybe a double disc "complete greatest hits" is in order(?!)

CD-Charts Position 2
Average Rating:

United Artists Collection [2 CD Set]

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 05, 1993
When I was in grade school I had a teacher who would bring in his guitar from time to time and start strumming Gordon Lightfoot songs, such as "Early Morning Rain". When the 1970's arrived Lightfoot issued his biggest hits like "Sundown", "If You Could Read My Mind" and "Edmund Fitzgerald", but his 1960's UA collection here is what's best and most pure about his music.

One can see Gord travelling across Canada with a guitar slung around his shoulder, singing about steel rails, majestic mountains, the fleeting loves of a roving musician and so on. When I first heard the original version of "Canadian Railroad Trilogy" it sounded much folkier and less polished than the Gord's Gold reissue I was more familiar with. Yet once I heard the ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 3
Average Rating:

Don Quixote

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date June 28, 1994
I appreciate Lightfoot's musical ramblings. I even saw him play a few tunes at the Ryman. But I wish I'd seen him when he was first touring with these songs, on this album; he truly was the Minstrel of the Dawn+

CD-Charts Position 4
Average Rating:

If You Could Read My Mind

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 25, 1990
I've loved this album for 35 years. Some of the people close to me used to make fun of the music, and I still don't understand why. His songs touch me in a different way from other music. Some people I've known have been just as involved with listening to his music as I, so he doesn't seem to affect people in a middle of the road way - you love his music, or you don't care much for it. "The Pony Man" lullaby, one of my favorites, was a big reason to buy this CD, which I also have on vinyl. The "Pony Man" CD version isn't available for download anywhere I've found. Moody, pensive and poignant tunes to fill your soul with what you hunger for.

CD-Charts Position 5
Average Rating:

Gord's Gold

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 04, 2005
The other day, I told my disbelieving, hip-hopped-up teenaged son about how Gordon Lightfoot's sweet and beautiful melodies were actually staples of the radio airwaves in the 1970s. Hard to believe, in this age of good-yet-throbbing rap, hiphop and their offshoots that melodies and acoustic guitar music could sell. Having thrown out my scratched LP a long time ago, I have gone a long time without hearing this music. Lightfoot, as we know, re-recorded many of his classics for this wonderful album. His paeans to railroads and industry may seem jarring in this green age, but they represent a truth about our culture: we are an industrialized people that transformed a wilderness (so-called or no) into something more to our liking. I'll think about that the next time ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 6
Average Rating:

Summertime Dream

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 25, 1990
This album is worth the money for just The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, in my opinion. However, the rest of the album is not to be underestimated. It's a great easy-going album which doesn't have any offensive tunes on it. This is a great background music album to play for a group of friends to sit around and enjoy some good conversation and wine!

CD-Charts Position 7
Average Rating:

Songbook

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date June 15, 1999
I liked the Lightfoot stuff on United Artists. I LOVED the stuff on Warner Brothers. My problem with this set is that after Lightfoot settled on a recording group for several 70s albums in a row, they re-recorded some of the earlier songs, like "Bittergreen," with fuller instrumentation and better production. The songs here are great. They're just not the versions I have come to love. Better to splurge for a couple of volumes of "Gord's Gold," and a few LPs like "Summer Side of Life," and get the songs as Lightfoot finally and fully realized them. I bought this box set and was bitterly disappointed. His mature versions of the same songs are infinitely more moving.Gord's GoldSummer Side of LifeGord's Gold, Vol. 2

CD-Charts Position 8
Average Rating:

Gord's Gold

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 25, 1990
This CD does leave off Affair on Eighth Avenue, which is fine by me, it not being one of my favorite songs anyway. What I am amazed by is the sheer number of excellent songs Lightfoot has written over the years.
And a great many of them are on this compilation. It doesn't really matter to me if he decides to redo some songs, that's ok.. they're HIS songs.Upon reading the inside of the booklet and seeing in bold type ALL SELECTIONS WRITTEN BY GORDON LIGHTFOOT, I was kicked in the head by the man's output through the years. Absolutely astounding. How did he do it?
How does one mind come up with so many great songs? And the most astounding thing is, this album was released BEFORE Summertime Dream, Shadows, Endless Wire, Shadows, etc. etc.
Sometimes a Greatest ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 9
Average Rating:

Sundown

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 25, 1990
oh, and for "carefree highway," because those were the two hits.

and being experienced in these matters, i naturally expected the rest of the album to be filler--that's the way it always is, right?

well, not this time; i still remember ripping off the cellophane, the needle dropping and "somewhere usa" working its way into my soul for the first time. and it only got better with each song, to the point where the two songs i'd bought it for were probably my least-favorites of the whole album.

thirty-five years later, not much has changed--this was a five-star work of art then, and it still is now.


[and the fact that i expected the same magic from his follow-up, "cold on the shoulder," can be written off to my youthful ignorance ... Read More:

CD-Charts Position 10
Average Rating:

Gord's Gold, Vol. 2

by: Gordon Lightfoot

Release Date October 25, 1990
This second helping of Gordon Lightfoot's "gold" is a tepid follow-up to his phenomenal first album of hits and songs. Except for a couple of tunes, the music itself lacks depth and interest. The production is overly-synthesized, masking Lightfoot's best assets -- his soulful voice, the poetry of his stories and the rugged clank of his folk guitar. His forays into blues and standard country-rock are mistakes. There are tunes that are so heavily reverbed that it sounds like you're listening to a performance from an echoey hallway. The album's hits -- "The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald" and "Alberta Bound" -- are not Gordon's greatest. "Wreck" is good, but it's one of the few times I would have preferred the radio version than the reworked one. This second-rate material just begs to be ... Read More: