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      Listen to the Mother of All Playlists

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      Hear songs by Brandi Carlile, 2Pac, Merle Haggard and more for Mother’s Day.Brandi Carlile’s “The Mother” is one of the more honest songs about motherhood in the canon.Ricardo Nagaoka for The New York TimesDear listeners,A lot of music about motherhood gets a bad rap.Given how much our culture devalues women’s work — and domestic work most of all — this shouldn’t be terribly surprising, but it’s still a bummer. That nebulously defined genre of dad rock has, over the years, earned a begrudging cultural respect, but the phrase “mom rock,” in the rare instances it’s used, still sounds like an insult.I remember discussing this double standard a few years ago when I was interviewing the singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell, who won a Tony for her score for the hit musical “Hadestown” and releases incisively observed folk music under her own name. Becoming a mother had ushered in a drastic change in her perspective — “a relocation of myself in the world and in my family,” in her words. She wanted to be able to write about that experience with all the richness and depth it deserved, even if it ran the risk of being labeled, as she put it with a laugh, “culturally irrelevant mom art.”Luckily, plenty of other songwriters have charted the choppy waters of motherhood — and of being mothered — proving it to be one of the most complicated, challenging and (at least sometimes) rewarding of human experiences. In honor of Mother’s Day (don’t forget: this Sunday!), I’ve put together a playlist of songs that reflect motherhood in all of its unruly complexity.But at the same time: not too unruly, on this day of celebrating moms. There is a time and a place for Danzig’s “Mother,” but it is neither now nor here on this playlist. Ditto John Lennon’s primal scream of “Mother,” though the Beatles’ “Julia” might have been a more appropriate choice. I would here like to acknowledge the existence of the Spice Girls’ “Mama” and Good Charlotte’s “Thank You Mom” without asking you to listen to them.The aforementioned Anaïs Mitchell, however, did make the cut, along with an eclectic group of artists including 2Pac, Brandi Carlile and Beyoncé. Mamma mia, here we go.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Kacey Musgraves: “Mother”The shortest, sparsest song on Kacey Musgraves’s 2018 album, “Golden Hour,” is also the most emotionally piercing. “I’m just sitting here, thinking ’bout the time that’s slipping and missing my mother,” the country renegade sings with heartbreaking plaintiveness, before zooming out a generation and imagining that her own mother is probably doing the same. Musgraves has said that “Mother” is one of the “Golden Hour” songs she wrote while tripping on LSD — but don’t tell her mom that part. (Listen on YouTube)2. Beverly Glenn-Copeland: “La Vita”The pioneering composer and new age artist Beverly Glenn-Copeland has, in recent years, experienced a long-delayed and much deserved uptick in popularity thanks to a series of reissues and the enthusiastic embrace of a younger generation of musicians. The enchanting “La Vita,” from Copeland’s self-released 2004 album “Primal Prayer,” features operatic vocals from the soprano Maggie Hollis, over which Copeland intones a stirring lyric that ends with a profoundly grounding reminder: “And my mother says to me, ‘enjoy your life.’” (Remember that refrain; it’s going to make another appearance later in this playlist.) (Listen on YouTube)3. Brandi Carlile: “The Mother”Carlile doesn’t sugarcoat the experience of motherhood in this beautifully written standout from her 2018 album, “By the Way, I Forgive You,” but that gives the song a lived-in honesty, and makes its warmth come across as something more powerful than empty sentiment. “They’ve still got their morning paper and their coffee and their time,” she sings of her “rowdy” friends without children. But for all that is lost, she realizes, so much has also been gained since the birth of her daughter: “All the wonders I have seen I will see a second time from inside of the ages of your eyes.” (Listen on YouTube)4. Merle Haggard: “Mama Tried”“Instead of life in prison I was doing one-to-15 years,” Merle Haggard once admitted of the slight embellishment as to how he spent his 21st birthday in one of his most famous (and semi-autobiographical) songs. “I just couldn’t get that to rhyme.” Though its title gives repentance some lip service — hey, at least he’s not blaming her! — Haggard still sounds like a hellion on this 1968 hit. The more sincere Mother’s Day gift would arrive much later, in 1981, when he released the gospel album “Songs for the Mama That Tried,” and even put sweet Flossie Mae Harp on the cover. (Listen on YouTube)5. 2Pac: “Dear Mama”The rap game “Mama Tried”? Of his cleareyed but thoroughly loving tribute to his mother, Afeni Shakur, Tupac once said, “I aimed that one straight for my homies’ heartstrings.” Mission accomplished. (Listen on YouTube)6. Anaïs Mitchell: “Little Big Girl”This one’s a heartstring-tugger, too. Mitchell is caught between being a child and an elder on “Little Big Girl,” a poignant song from her 2022 self-titled album. There’s a striking moment toward the end when she catches her reflection in a window and sees her mother, tired, “coming home from work.” Mitchell sings with great empathy, “Tell her you love her/Tell her you’re her.” (Listen on YouTube)7. Beyoncé featuring Blue Ivy: “Blue”Named after Beyoncé’s first child, “Blue” is all the more tender for its placement at the end of her imperial 2013 self-titled album; it follows “Heaven,” a wrenching ballad about suffering a miscarriage. Bey’s candor about both the grief of pregnancy loss and the joys of a hard-won motherhood helped this album feel like a turning point in her career: the beginning of her grown-woman era. (Listen on YouTube)8. The Shirelles: “Mama Said”The vocal sound of most ’60s girl groups was chatty and communal — a musical means of sharing wisdom, commentary and advice from woman to woman. This classic from the great early ’60s hitmakers the Shirelles passes on some maternal know-how that mama acquired in the days when she, too, was just a teenager in love. (Listen on YouTube)9. Romy: “Enjoy Your Life”Remember that Glenn-Copeland refrain? The xx’s Romy Madley Croft samples it to extraordinary effect in this recently released and stirringly soulful solo single. “I made a promise to my mother to stop worrying ’bout my problems,” she sings, as Glenn-Copeland’s voice rings out like a compassionate elder bestowing glowing benevolence on a musical daughter: “My mother says to me, ‘Enjoy your life.’” (Listen on YouTube)Hi, Mom,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“The Mother of All Playlists” track listTrack 1: Kacey Musgraves, “Mother”Track 2: Beverly Glenn-Copeland, “La Vita”Track 3: Brandi Carlile, “The Mother”Track 4: Merle Haggard, “Mama Tried”Track 5: 2Pac, “Dear Mama”Track 6: Anaïs Mitchell, “Little Big Girl”Track 7: Beyoncé featuring Blue Ivy, “Blue”Track 8: The Shirelles, “Mama Said”Track 9: Romy, “Enjoy Your Life”Bonus TracksSome wise words from the Swedish pop queen Robyn, on her 2010 song “Include Me Out”: “All hail to the mamas, who hold it down/Hail to the pillar of the family/This one’s for the grannys, take a bow.”Also, few songwriters have captured the experience of adoption as poignantly and prismatically as Joni Mitchell did on “Little Green,” from her legendary 1971 album, “Blue.”Speaking of Joni: Hear a newly released recording of her performing “Both Sides Now” at last year’s Newport Folk Festival (and music from Dolly Parton, Rhiannon Giddens and more) in this week’s Playlist. More

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      Dolly Parton Goes Arena Rock, and 9 More New Songs

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      Hear tracks by Jorja Smith, Rhiannon Giddens, Shakira and others.Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week’s most notable new tracks. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist@nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once-a-week blast of our pop music coverage, and The Amplifier, a twice-weekly guide to new and old songs.Dolly Parton, ‘World on Fire’Dolly Parton has announced an album due Nov. 17, “Rockstar,” that will be full of remakes of hits, often joined by the original performers. But she also brought some songs of her own including this one, her worried, indignant assessment of a “World on Fire” that’s full of lies and conflict. It’s Dolly gone arena-rock goth, with power-chord blasts and martial drums. A gospelly bridge asks, “Can’t we rise above/Can’t we show some love?,” but then it’s back to minor chords as Parton belts her best intentions — “Let’s heal the hurt/let kindness work” — against a grim, stomping, “We Will Rock You”-style chant: “Whatcha gonna do when it all burns down?” Parton concludes by posing that same question. JON PARELESJoni Mitchell, ‘Both Sides Now (Live at the Newport Folk Festival 2022)’Joni Mitchell’s surprise appearance at the 2022 Newport Folk Festival, bolstered and surrounded by dedicated admirers like Brandi Carlile, was a demonstration not only of gumption, support and resilience, but of enduring musicianship and control. “Both Sides Now” previews an official live album, “At Newport,” due July 28. As a piano ripples and strings swell behind her, with Carlile and Lucius adding vocal harmonies, Mitchell makes each phrase purposeful, reflective and improvisatory, and her lowered, roughened but precise voice makes every word a life lesson. PARELESRhiannon Giddens, ‘You’re the One’Fresh off winning the Pulitzer Prize for music for her opera, “Omar,” Rhiannon Giddens releases “You’re the One,” the title song of her first full album of her own songs (though she has written, adapted and collaborated widely). As she sings about finding a love that turns “shades of gray” into “a new Technicolor world,” the song explodes out of her string-band foundations — banjo and fiddle — into full-tilt rock choruses, bursting with euphoria. PARELESJorja Smith, ‘Little Things’A jazzy piano lick and frenetic beat drive the English R&B artist Jorja Smith’s new single “Little Things,” which captures the atmosphere of a vibey, intimate house party with a densely populated dance floor. “Just a little thing for you and I,” Smith intones before shrugging with a cool nonchalance. “And if it’s meant to be than that’s all right.” LINDSAY ZOLADZFatoumata Diawara and Roberto Fonseca, ‘Blues’Fatoumata Diawara, from Mali, rides a galloping six-beat modal groove topped by the Cuban pianist Roberto Fonseca in “Blues,” which is by far the rawest song on her new album of international fusions, “London Ko.” She produced it with Damon Albarn of Gorillaz. The lyrics, in Bambara and English, are about gratitude to her family; the spirit is centered and fierce. PARELESShakira, ‘Acróstico’Acróstico means acrostic, and the first letters of the five-line verses for Shakira’s new song spell out the names of her sons, Milan and Sasha. It’s the latest missive following her breakup with the soccer player Gerard Piqué, and it’s a declaration of unswerving maternal devotion through her own pain. “Even if life treats me this way/I will be strong for you alone,” she sings over steadfast piano chords. “All I want is your happiness/And to be with you.” There’s a hint of U2’s “Every Breaking Wave” in the chorus as it climbs to a tremulous peak: wounded but resolutely compassionate. PARELESChristine and the Queens, ‘Tears Can Be So Soft’Hélöise Letissier, a.k.a. Chris, the songwriter and voice of Christine and the Queens, plunges into separation and consolation in “Tears Can Be So Soft.” It’s built on a sample of the string arrangement from Marvin Gaye’s “Feel All My Love Inside”: an octave-leaping, tremulous swoop that changes from major to minor. Chris sings about missing family, friends and a lover and crying while driving on the freeway, with only the warmth and release of tears for comfort; a string section pays witness. PARELESRob Moose featuring Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Wasted’Rob Moose’s violin mirrors Phoebe Bridgers’s nocturnal anxiety on “Wasted,” a song from Moose’s upcoming EP, “Inflorescence.” Plucked notes echo her tense nerves while a groaning bed of strings brings an added pathos to the lyrics, which were written by Bridgers’s collaborator Marshall Vore. “I used to have the energy to get mad, used to know how to say sorry,” Bridgers sings with wry self-judgment and an escalating intensity. “But now I’m back with none of that.” ZOLADZNatural Wonder Beauty Concept, ‘Sword’A keyboard loop that hints at harpsichord or koto, pitch-shifted vocals, sporadic drum thuds, bits of static and the sound of a sword being unsheathed run through “Sword,” a stubbornly fragile track by the singer Ana Roxanne and the producer DJ Python. They have collaborated as Natural Wonder Beauty Concept for an album due July 14. “Sword” is at once transparent and elusive, with barely intelligible lyrics — “Everyone passes through,” Roxanne coos — and a willingness to tweak everything; the last section lowers and slows down every element but remains enigmatic. PARELESBen Chasny & Rick Tomlinson, ‘Waking of Insects’Ben Chasny records as Six Organs of Admittance; Rick Tomlinson records as, among other names, Voice of the Seven Woods. Both love minimalist repetition and gradual unfoldings, and in 2017 they made an album of duets. “Waking of Insects” was recorded live, just two acoustic guitars. They share interlocking fingerpicked patterns and, with moments of dissonance, nudge one another toward new ones, very gradually making their way from quick, fluttering interplay to tolling repose. PARELES More

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      Chris Strachwitz, Who Dug Up the Roots of American Music, Dies at 91

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      Traveling the nation to discover little-known performers for the Arhoolie label, which he founded in 1960, he earned a nickname: El Fanático.Chris Strachwitz, who traveled in search of the roots of American music with the eagerness of a pilgrim, discovered traditional musicians with the skill of a detective, promoted their careers with the zeal of an ideologue and guarded their work with the care of a historian, died on Friday at an assisted living facility in San Rafael, Calif. He was 91.The cause was congestive heart failure, his brother, Hubert, said.Mr. Strachwitz (pronounced STRACK-wits) specialized in music passed down over generations — cotton-field music, orange-orchard music, mountain music, bayou music, barroom music, porch music. The songs came not only from before the era of the music industry but even from before the existence of mass culture itself.Like other leading musical folklorists of the modern recording era — among them Moses Asch, Alan Lomax and Harry Smith — Mr. Strachwitz rescued parts of that history before they vanished.But the extent of his devotion and the idiosyncrasy of his passions defy comparison.Mr. Strachwitz was the founder of Arhoolie Records (the name comes from a term for field hollers). In addition to recruiting his own artists, he did his own field recordings, music editing, production, liner notes, advertising and sales. In the company’s early years, he affixed the labels to the records and mailed them himself.He was a lifelong bachelor who said that having a family would have thwarted his career. On his journeys around the country to record new music, he had for company a manually operated orange juicer and 20-pound bags of oranges. The targets of his search included a highway grass cutter, a gravedigger and a janitor, all of whose musical talents were at the time basically unknown.He emigrated from Germany after growing up as a teenage count under Nazi rule and went on to explore the fullest reaches of American pluralism. He took an interest not just in the standard roots repertory of folk and blues, but also in norteño, Cajun, zydeco, klezmer, Hawaiian steel guitar, Ukrainian fiddle, Czech polka and Irish dance music, among countless other genres.To account for what united his passions, Mr. Strachwitz said he liked music that was “pure,” “hard-core” and “old-timey,” particularly if one of the musicians had a “spark.” His language grew more colorful when he defined his type of music negatively.“It ain’t wimpy, that’s for sure,” he said in a 2014 documentary about him. The movie took its title from Mr. Strachwitz’s ultimate insult, which he used to refer to anything that he considered commercial, artificial and soulless: “This Ain’t No Mouse Music!”The first Arhoolie album, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. It vaulted Mr. Lipscomb into prominence during the 1960s folk revival.The first Arhoolie record, released in 1960, was “Texas Sharecropper and Songster,” by the blues singer Mance Lipscomb. Mr. Lipscomb’s music had never been recorded, and the new release vaulted him into prominence during the 1960s folk revival. Mr. Strachwitz went on to help revive the careers of other blues singers, including Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell and Big Mama Thornton.As both a record executive and a record collector, he made a particularly profound historical contribution to norteño, music from the Texas-Mexico border. The Smithsonian Institution last year called his archive of Mexican and Mexican American music “the largest collection of commercially produced vernacular recordings of its kind in existence,” noting that it contained many records that are “irreplaceable.”It was the result of about 60 years of collecting — yet Mr. Strachwitz never learned to speak Spanish. Norteño musicians nicknamed him El Fanático.Mr. Strachwitz might have been considered a preservationist, but he also shaped the worlds that he documented. That was particularly true of his recordings of Cajun musicians In 2000, the rock historian Ed Ward wrote in The New York Times that Mr. Strachwitz “helped prod the culture into what is now a full-blown renaissance.”Perhaps his most notable discovery in Louisiana was Clifton Chenier, who became known as the leading exponent of the mix of rhythm and blues, soul and Cajun music known as zydeco. During a visit to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as an older man, Mr. Chenier discussed his frustrations with the record industry.“They wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”Mr. Strachwitz with Clifton Chenier, who was known as the king of zydeco. Other record companies “wanted you to do what they wanted you to do, and I didn’t like that,” Mr. Chenier said. “Then I met Chris.”via Arhoolie FoundationMainstream musicians also saw something exceptional in Mr. Strachwitz. In a 2010 profile of Mr. Strachwitz in The Times, the guitarist Ry Cooder said that Arhoolie’s second release, “Tough Times,” an LP by the blues musician Big Joe Williams, “started me on a path of living, the path I am still on.”Christian Alexander Maria Strachwitz was born on July 1, 1931, in Berlin. He grew up on a country estate called Gross Reichenau, located in what was then the Lower Silesia region of Germany (it is now a village called Bogaczow in southwest Poland). His father, Alexander Graf Strachwitz, and his mother, Friederike (von Bredow) Strachwitz, ran a vegetable and grain farm of about a couple hundred acres. The men of the family had the royal title of count.The family lived in a manor originally built during the time of Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia. The Nazis appointed Chris’s father a local game warden, and during World War II he joined the military and attained the rank of captain, though Hubert Strachwitz said his service was limited to escorting troop transports bound for Italy. On the family’s bucolic ancestral property, the war seemed far away to young Chris.That changed in February 1945. The family fled as the Russians invaded the estate. Chris and two of his sisters had left shortly beforehand on a train; his father escaped in a horse and buggy; Hubert, Chris’s other two sisters and his mother left on a tractor-trailer. Thanks to a wealthy relative in the United States, the family was able to reunite in Reno, Nev., by 1947.Chris served in the U.S. Army from 1954 to 1956. Soon after being honorably discharged, he graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, with a bachelor’s degree in political science. He taught high school German in the suburbs of San Jose for several years.In his free time, Mr. Strachwitz collected records, and he developed a particular interest in Lightnin’ Hopkins, whom he struggled to learn more about. There was no public information about whether Mr. Hopkins was even still alive.Mr. Strachwitz going through the Arhoolie archives in El Cerrito, Calif., in 2010.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIn 1959, a fellow music enthusiast told Mr. Strachwitz that he had found the bluesman in Houston. When the school year ended, Mr. Strachwitz went on a road trip.He later recalled that he found Mr. Hopkins playing in “a little beer joint” — improvising songs in a conversational style, telling a woman in the crowd to quiet down, wondering in song about the man from California who had traveled all the way to Texas “to hear poor Lightnin’ sing.”Mr. Strachwitz believed that nobody had ever recorded a scene like that live. Following a tip from one of Mr. Hopkins’s songs, he returned to Texas the next year and found Mr. Lipscomb. This time, he brought a recorder.Meeting musicians where they lived and recording them where they liked to play, rather than in a studio, became Mr. Strachwitz’s signature style.He found unexpected commercial success when Country Joe and the Fish performed their “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at Woodstock in 1969. Joe McDonald, the band’s lead singer and principal songwriter, had used Mr. Strachwitz’s equipment to record the song back in 1965 and given him publishing rights in exchange. With his share of the royalties, Mr. Strachwitz put a down payment on a building in El Cerrito, Calif., near Berkeley, that became the home of Arhoolie and a record outlet he called the Down Home Music Store.Aside from recording music, he drew attention to the artists he loved by collaborating with the filmmaker Les Blank on several music documentaries.As the record industry declined, Mr. Strachwitz focused on a nonprofit arm of Arhoolie that digitizes and exhibits his singular record collection. In 2016, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the nonprofit label of the Smithsonian Institution, acquired the Arhoolie catalog.In addition to his brother, Mr. Strachwitz is survived by three sisters, Rosy Schlueter, Barbara Steward and Frances Strachwitz.There was one word Mr. Strachwitz often used to describe success in his field. When he found an aged master of traditional music playing a song at a resonant time and place, he called it, as if he were hunting butterflies, a “catch.” More

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      When Connie Converse, the ‘Female Bob Dylan,’ Lived in N.Y.C.

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      There’s a resurgence of interest in the pioneering singer-songwriter who disappeared when she was 50.Connie Converse was a pioneer of what’s become known as the singer-songwriter era, making music in the predawn of a movement that had its roots in the Greenwich Village folk scene of the early 1960s.But her songs, created a decade earlier, arrived just a moment too soon. They didn’t catch on. And by the time the sun had come up in the form of a young Bob Dylan, she was already gone. Not simply retired. She had vanished from New York City, as she eventually would from the world, along with her music and legacy.It wasn’t until 2004, when an N.Y.U. graduate student heard a 1954 bootleg recording of Ms. Converse on WNYC, that her music started to get any of the attention and respect that had evaded her some 50 years before.The student, Dan Dzula, and his friend, David Herman, were spellbound by what they heard. They dug up more archival recordings, and assembled the 2009 album, “How Sad, How Lovely,” a compilation of songs that sound as though they could have been written today. It has been streamed over 16 million times on Spotify.Young musicians like Angel Olsen and Greta Kline now cite Ms. Converse as an influence, and musical acts from Big Thief to Laurie Anderson to the opera singer Julia Bullock have covered her songs.“She was the female Bob Dylan,” Ellen Stekert, a singer, folk music scholar and song collector told me during my research for a book about Ms. Converse. “She was even better than him, as a lyricist and composer, but she didn’t have his showbiz savvy, and she wasn’t interested in writing protest songs.”Seventy-five years ago, Ms. Converse was just another young artist trying to make ends meet in the city, singing at dinner parties and private salons, and passing a hat for her performances.She knew that her songs did not jibe with the saccharine pop of the day. “This type of thing always curdles me like a dentist’s appointment,” she wrote to her brother before an audition at Frank Loesser’s music publishing company, where she predicted what executives would say of her songs: “lovely, but not commercial.”In January 1961, the same month that Dylan arrived from the Midwest, Ms. Converse left New York for Ann Arbor, Mich., where she reinvented herself as an editor, a scholar and an activist.In 1974, a week after her 50th birthday, she disappeared and was never seen again.Ms. Converse lived in New York from 1945 to 1960, and though she was intensely private, she kept a diary, scrapbooks and voluminous correspondence that were left behind after she drove away for good, offering clues about what the Manhattan chapter of her life was like. Here are some of the neighborhoods, venues and sites around the city that provided the musician with a backdrop for her short but trailblazing stint as a songwriter.The 1940s: Bohemians of the Upper West SideRiverside ParkIn 1944, after dropping out of Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, Ms. Converse moved to New York. Her first job was at the American Institute of Pacific Relations, where she edited and wrote articles about international affairs. “I am struck by the breadth of the topics she covered,” said the contemporary international relations scholar Michael R. Anderson, who calls her writing and reporting “remarkable.”She lived on the Upper West Side. The image of her in Riverside Park, above, was found in an old filing cabinet that belonged to the photographer’s widow. It is one of the first known images of Ms. Converse in New York.The Lincoln ArcadeMs. Converse, left, plays for friends at the Lincoln Arcade.Lois AimeSome of Ms. Converse’s closest friends lived and hung around the bohemian enclave known as the Lincoln Arcade, a building on Broadway between West 65th and 66th Street. With a reputation as a haven for struggling artists, it had been home to the painters Robert Henri, Thomas Hart Benton and George Bellows, the last of whom had lived there with the playwright Eugene O’Neill.The group was a hard-drinking lot, given to holding court late at night. One surviving member of that crew, Edwin Bock, told me that Ms. Converse would often be clattering away at a typewriter, at a remove from the rest, though sometimes she did things he found shocking, like climbing out the front window well past midnight to stand on a ledge, several stories above the street.The 1950s: Making Music in the Village and Beyond23 Grove StreetPhotographs from Ms. Converse’s scrapbook show her studio apartment at 23 Grove Street, where she wrote almost all of her “guitar song” catalog.The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCMs. Converse lost her job when the institute landed in the cross hairs of the anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee. Sometime late in 1950, she moved to the West Village and began a new phase of her life as an aspiring composer and performer.She bought a Crestwood 404 reel-to-reel tape recorder and began making demos of herself singing new songs as she wrote them. It was here, while living alone in a studio apartment at 23 Grove Street that Ms. Converse wrote almost all of her “guitar song” catalog (including everything on “How Sad, How Lovely”).The Village at that time “was the Left Bank of Manhattan,” the writer Gay Talese told me, and it had “whiffs of the future in it” in terms of its permissiveness about lifestyle choices. Nicholas Pileggi, a writer and producer, suggested that given her address, Ms. Converse, a loner, would have had no problem hanging out by herself at Chumley’s, a former speakeasy.The upstart book publisher Grove Press was also just down the block, and she was close to The Nut Club at Sheridan Square, where jazz musicians often played, as well as the more respectable Village Vanguard.Grand CentralPhotographs from Ms. Converse’s scrapbook show her first and only appearance on live television: The Morning Show, with Walter Cronkite. There is no recording of the live performance. The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCHer first and only television appearance was in 1954, on the “The Morning Show” on CBS (hosted that year by Walter Cronkite), though how Ms. Converse secured the appearance and what she played and talked about may never be known (shows at this time were broadcast live; no archival footage exists). Because the program was staged in a studio above the main concourse at Grand Central and shown live on a big screen in the hall, everyone bustling through the station that morning could have looked up and caught the young musician’s one and only brush with success.Ms. Converse was extremely close to her younger brother, Phil. When he visited her in the city for the first time, Ms. Converse described the reunion in her irregularly kept diary, noting that the two “met like strangers at Grand Central, and fell to reminiscing over oysters.”Hamilton HeightsMs. Converse took a photograph of the street below her W. 138th St. apartment in 1958.The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCIn 1955, Ms. Converse took up residence at 605 West 138th Street, in Harlem, a block away from Strivers’ Row. There, she shared a three-bedroom flat with her older brother, Paul, his wife, Hyla, and their infant child, P. Bruce, a situation she called “a cost-saving measure.” The new apartment had an upright piano, which Ms. Converse used to compose an opera (now since lost), a series of settings for poems by writers like Dylan Thomas, E.E. Cummings and Edna St. Vincent Millay, and a song cycle based on the myth of Cassandra who, according to Greek mythology, was given the gift of prophesy and then cursed to be never understood.Circle in the SquareThe 1956 production of “The Iceman Cometh,” which Ms. Converse attended. Sam Falk/The New York TimesAn avid theatergoer, Ms. Converse attended Jose Quintero’s 1956 revival of “The Iceman Cometh,” which made Jason Robards a star and effectively launched the Off-Broadway movement. “Did I mention that I saw an in-the-round production of ‘The Iceman Cometh’ last month?” she wrote to Phil and his wife, Jean, that October. “Some four and a half hours of uncut O’Neill, but only the last 15 minutes found me squirming in my seat.”The Blue AngelAt this erstwhile nightclub on East 55th Street, unique at the time for being desegregated, Ms. Converse met the cabaret singer Annette Warren, who expressed interest in covering Ms. Converse’s songs, and who would make at least two of them, “The Playboy of The Western World” and “The Witch and the Wizard,” staples of her show for decades to come.1960: The Lost Tape; Goodbye, New YorkNational Recording StudiosNational Recording Studios, at 730 Fifth Avenue between West 56th and 57th Streets, had been open for only a year when Ms. Converse showed up in February 1960 to record an album. It was a solo session that, because she did just one or two takes of each tune, only took a few hours. The recording was a rumor until 2014, when Phil Converse unearthed a reel of it in his basement. An adman who was a fan of Ms. Converse’s music had procured the recording session for her for free. That album, the only one she made, remains unreleased.Upper West SideMs. Converse in her apartment on West 88th Street, her last known residence in New York. The Musick Group, Heroic Cities LLCMs. Converse closed the circle of her peripatetic Manhattan existence by moving back to where she’d started: the Upper West Side. This time, she lived in a brownstone on West 88th Street, a half block from Central Park. This was her last known New York address; by 1961, she was gone.Her music, mostly made in isolation or at small gatherings, was nearly lost but for the efforts of her brother Phil, who archived what he could; David Garland, who played her music on WNYC in 2004 and 2009; and Dan Dzula and David Herman, the students who, decades later, introduced her work to a new generation.“The first time I played a Connie Converse song for a friend, she sat silently and cried,” Mr. Dzula said. “From that moment I knew Connie’s magic would reach at least a few more people in a deeply personal and special way.”He added: “Could I have envisioned her blowing up like this when we first put out the record? Absolutely not. But also, yeah, kind of!”Howard Fishman is the author of the new book “To Anyone Who Ever Asks: The Life, Music, and Mystery of Connie Converse.” More

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      Did the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Gasp) Get It Right?

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      Hear songs from the class of 2023’s seven inductees, including Sheryl Crow, Missy Elliott and Willie Nelson.Perhaps making the Rock Hall made Sheryl Crow happy (which can’t be that bad).Rebecca Smeyne for The New York TimesDear listeners,I don’t have much reverence for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — a shadowy and arbitrary institution founded by record executives and music industry influencers who have historically hewed to a pretty narrow definition of rock ’n’ roll. However, this year’s inductees, which were announced earlier this week, represent one of the strongest classes in recent memory.This calls for a playlist.The group of seven artists who will join the institution in November contains both overdue legends (Willie Nelson, the Spinners) and iconoclastic innovators (Kate Bush, Rage Against the Machine). It’s a bit more diverse than the normal Rock Hall class, which isn’t saying much: According to the writer Evelyn McDonnell, who has long been covering the Hall’s glaring biases, women make up just 8.63 percent of its inductees. The great Missy Elliott will make history this year as not just the first female rapper to make it in, but also the first Black female artist inducted in her first year of eligibility. Such achievements are worth celebrating — as Elliott did, in an exuberant series of tweets — but we should also bemoan the fact that they took so long to happen in the first place.In sequencing today’s selections, I found some common threads: the way Bush and Elliott share an imaginative and ambitiously artful approach to composition; the way George Michael updates the intricate soulfulness of a group like the Spinners for the more self-aware ’90s; a certain sneer in Sheryl Crow’s delivery that, when it hits in a certain way, echoes the grit of Rage’s Zack De La Rocha.Purists can debate whether or not any of these artists can be classified as “rock,” but I prefer the more exciting definition Ice Cube put forth in his speech when he was inducted with the rap group N.W.A in 2016. “Rock ’n’ roll is not an instrument; rock ’n’ roll is not even a style of music,” he said. “Rock ’n’ roll is a spirit. Rock ’n’ roll is not conforming to the people who came before you, but creating your own path in music and in life.”Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. Kate Bush: “The Big Sky”This year marked the fourth time Bush has been nominated for the Rock Hall, but it’s likely that the recent, “Stranger Things”-inspired resurgence in the popularity of “Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)” finally pushed her over the edge. You’ve probably heard that song plenty in the past year, so how about a less ubiquitous — but just as great — track from that same 1985 album, “Hounds of Love”? The 1-2-3-punch of “Running Up That Hill,” the title track and this one, “The Big Sky,” just might be one of the most visionary opening stretches of any pop album. (Listen on YouTube)2. Missy Elliott, “Work It”Sometimes the obvious choice is the correct choice. The hallucinatory “Work It” isn’t exactly an obscure B-side in Missy’s discography, but it’s one of the most obvious examples of her brash, otherworldly genius as both an M.C. and a producer, and of the gloriously outré sounds she was able to smuggle into the mainstream. Who else could run a chorus backward and still make its nonsense syllables sound so infectious? (Listen on YouTube)3. Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”Does this mean the RATM superfan Guy Fieri is a Rock Hall voter? I kid. Rage is probably the most traditionally rock-leaning artist among this year’s inductees — which is certainly saying something, since “traditional” isn’t a word I’d normally use to describe this band’s politics or sound, its most recognizable hits (like the pummeling “Bulls on Parade”) included. (Listen on YouTube)4. Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”It feels weird to call any of the singles on Crow’s huge debut album “Tuesday Night Music Club” underrated, but … I think this one actually is? Sure, “All I Wanna Do” has been overplayed to oblivion, and “Strong Enough” has proved an important touchstone for a younger generation of female musicians like Haim and boygenius — but “Leaving Las Vegas” has bars. Her delivery of the line “There’s such a muddy line between the things you want and the things you have to do” (!) kills me every single time. (Listen on YouTube)5. The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”The air is a little bit lighter in a Spinners song than it is back down here on Earth. Bobby Smith’s lead vocal seems to float just a few inches above the rest of the track, leaving no doubt about the answer to the question he poses in this timeless 1972 hit, by a group neglected by the Motown machine that rose to prominence anyway in its own time. (Listen on YouTube)6. George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”Some days, this is my answer to that impossible question, “What’s the best pop song of all time?” But any day of the week I’d tell you it’s the best song ever written about being a pop star — that strange contract between performer and fan that Michael knowingly interrogates from inside the machine and finally sets ablaze in a liberatory chorus. He more than deserves a place in the Rock Hall; I just wish he could have lived to attend his induction. (Listen on YouTube)7. Willie Nelson, “Tower of Song”Earlier this year, the newly 90-year-old Nelson beat out a bunch of young whippersnappers like Maren Morris, Miranda Lambert and Luke Combs to win the best country album Grammy for “A Beautiful Time.” It’s a lovely record with some strong original material, but the track I keep returning to is his lived-in rendition of Leonard Cohen’s wryly majestic “Tower of Song.” If this cover passed you by when the album first came out, well, you’re in for quite a treat. (Listen on YouTube)Pause for the chant,LindsayThe Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Did the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (Gasp) Get It Right?” track listTrack 1: Kate Bush, “The Big Sky”Track 2: Missy Elliott, “Work It”Track 3: Rage Against the Machine, “Bulls on Parade”Track 4: Sheryl Crow, “Leaving Las Vegas”Track 5: The Spinners, “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love”Track 6: George Michael, “Freedom! ’90”Track 7: Willie Nelson, “Tower of Song”Bonus tracksJoe Kwaczala and Kristen Studard host the highly entertaining podcast “Who Cares About the Rock Hall?,” which strikes a balance between appropriately irreverent skepticism (both are professional comedians) and Kwaczala’s encyclopedic knowledge of Rock Hall history. Every year, they do an in-depth episode about each of the nominees; I found out about the show when they kindly asked me to talk Dolly Parton with them last season. Their episode about this year’s class of inductees was especially great, if full of playful jabs at my queen Crow (I forgive, but will take this opportunity to link to one more Sheryl banger).And, as always, check out our weekly Playlist for the latest songs worth your time. Today we’ve got fresh tracks from the post-punk legends Bush Tetras, the D.J.-turned-electro-pop-singer-songwriter Avalon Emerson and more. Listen here. More

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      Gordon Lightfoot’s 10 Essential Songs

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      The Canadian singer-songwriter, who died on Monday at 84, brought his rueful baritone to memorable, melancholy material.Bob Dylan once named Gordon Lightfoot one of his favorite songwriters, and called the musician “somebody of rare talent” while inducting him into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1986. On Dylan’s 1970 album “Self Portrait,” he even recorded Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain,” and the respect was mutual — Lightfoot listened carefully to Dylan’s songs, which instilled in him “a more direct approach, getting away from the love songs,” he once said.In an expansive career that drew from Greenwich Village folk and Laurel Canyon pop, Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr., who died on Monday at 84, was embraced by a diverse group of musicians: Elvis Presley and Duran Duran, Lou Rawls and the Replacements. He sang in a rueful baritone full of tenacity and an almost professorial air, and specialized in songs that dwelled on solitude, or recounted unhappy relationships, in grounded language that drew on folk and blues modes.“Lightfoot’s is the voice of the romantic,” Geoffrey Stokes of The Village Voice wrote in 1974. “For him (as for Don Quixote, one of his chosen heroes) perfection is always in view and always slipping from his grasp.”Nowhere was Lightfoot more beloved than in his native Canada, where he helped transform its music industry into a worldwide force. “He sent a message to the world that we’re not just a bunch of lumberjacks and hockey players up here,” Geddy Lee of Rush said in “If You Could Read My Mind,” a 2019 documentary. “We’re capable of sensitivity and poetry.” In the process, Lightfoot became one of the most successful recording artists of the 1970s.Here are 10 of Lightfoot’s most beloved and impactful songs.“For Lovin’ Me” (1966)The folk tradition in which Lightfoot initially worked is full of boastful songs about rambling men who are lighting out for the territory, but this one is uniquely cruel. It’s pushed along by his stout acoustic guitar strumming and David Rea’s sleek fingerpicking accents, which reinforce the lyric’s hauteur. “Everything you have is gone,” Lightfoot tells the woman he’s leaving. “That’s what you get for lovin’ me.” Her broken heart will eventually mend, he adds, at which point “I just might pass this way again.” He later felt some embarrassment about the song, and said, “I didn’t know what chauvinism was.”“Early Morning Rain” (1966)Lightfoot grew up in bucolic Central Ontario, which could hardly be farther from Memphis, but he sounds nearly Southern on this simple, brisk folk song, which Presley recorded a few years later. Its theme is homesickness (Lightfoot was living in Los Angeles when he wrote it); the narrator, who’s “as cold and drunk as I can be,” in addition to broke, watches a 707 fly overhead and envies its freedom as he pines for his hometown.“Did She Mention My Name” (1968)In this canny depiction of wounded pride, Lightfoot gets together with an old friend to shoot the breeze, but amid the chitchat about sports and mutual acquaintances, he casually slips in a question that reveals his agenda: “By the way, did she mention my name?” This song and “For Lovin’ Me” are fraternal twins, joined by their fascination with male pride.“Black Day in July” (1968)Lightfoot mostly worked the personal-relationship side of folk music and left the political side to others. The controversial “Black Day in July” has a restless, unsettled drum track, and describes the July 1967 uprisings in Detroit in which Black residents protested police abuse, prompting the governor to send in the National Guard and the president to send in the army. The song is full of irony, scorn and bafflement (“The soul of Motor City is feared across the land”) and most U.S. radio stations refused to play it.“If You Could Read My Mind” (1970)Lightfoot’s commercial breakthrough (it reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100) is also his masterpiece, with assistance from Nick DeCaro’s cascading string arrangement. The lyrics, inspired by his impending divorce, range from poetic to stark, until he reaches the stoic summary: “Stories always end.” The melody inspired Duran Duran’s “Save a Prayer,” and the song has been covered by a who’s who of singers, including Barbra Streisand, Johnny Cash and Neil Young — and, almost, by Frank Sinatra, who tried to record it but gave up, declaring it “too long.”“Sundown” (1974)Lightfoot was an alcoholic who knew a lot about tempestuous relationships. He wrote “Sundown” while in a jealous fit of fantasy about Cathy Smith, a girlfriend whose cheekbone he once broke during a fight. The lyrics are dark, and the snaking guitar solo is one of the great Red Shea’s finest moments. The song’s been covered by, among others, the goth legends Scott Walker and Depeche Mode.“Rainy Day People” (1975)The mid-70s was Lightfoot’s commercial peak, but this successor to the Top 10 pop hits “Sundown” and “Carefree Highway” didn’t get the reception it deserved. The chords and lyrics call to mind Jimmy Webb, as Lightfoot, with his usual precise elocution, celebrates the way loyal friendships give succor to “high-stepping strutters who land in the gutters.”“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976)His best-known song is one of the most unlikely pop hits: a six-and-a-half-minute folk ballad about a freighter that sank in Lake Superior a year earlier, killing 29 crew members. It’s also surely the only Top 40 song to ever mention Gitche Gumee, the Chippewa name for Lake Superior. The impish rock band NRBQ sometimes played a slow, out-of-tune cover of the song, and if the audience didn’t like it, it would play it a second time as well.“The Circle Is Small” (1978)In some of Lightfoot’s lyrics, it’s difficult to tell whether the conflicts he describes are factual or merely byproducts of a suspicious imagination. In this softly scornful song about cheating, which he recorded in 1968 and rerecorded 10 years later, in a superior version, he believes his lover is using a friend’s apartment to carry on an affair, and he implies that he’ll eventually catch her: “The city where we live might be quite large/But the circle is small.”“Harmony” (2004)In the 1980s, as music moved away from acoustic sounds, Lightfoot chased pop success by using synthesizers, drum machines and the producer David Foster, but he didn’t sound like himself. By the time of “Harmony,” he’d returned to working with the guitarists Shea and Terry Clements. Tobacco use had eaten away at the top of his range, but the title song of his penultimate studio album has a fragile, hard-won tenderness that seems to look back at his career (and his life) with peaceful regret. More

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      Moogs and Muppets: Record Shopping in Brooklyn

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      Picking through the bins at the Academy Records Annex, and rediscovering “Switched-On Rock,” as well as albums by Tim Hardin and Otis Redding.Lindsay ZoladzDear listeners,It’s time for another installment of the recurring Amplifier segment My Record Haul, honoring the serendipity and bargains that can be found at brick-and-mortar shops. Today’s features weird and wonderful finds from one of my favorite places in Brooklyn, the Academy Records Annex.I’ve been shopping at the Academy Records Annex (the Brooklyn offshoot of Academy Records on 12th Street in Manhattan) for long enough that I’ve visited it in three different locations: its huge former home on North 6th Street in Williamsburg; the Greenpoint spot it moved to in 2013 right by the East River*; and, now, its brand-new store in the same neighborhood, at 242 Banker Street.My latest visit was particularly fruitful — especially in the dollar bins — and I’ve put together a playlist from the records I bought that day. It’s fun, breezy and, as you’ll see at the very end, contains a few unexpected musical connections.Listen along on Spotify as you read.1. The Moog Machine: “Get Back”I have a morbid fascination with the many novelty synthesizer records that were pumped out in the late 1960s after Wendy Carlos’s “Switched-On Bach” became an unexpected commercial hit. By 1970, there was “Switched-On Country,” “Switched-On Bacharach” (clever) and my personal favorite in title if not in execution, “Switched-On Santa.” I did not own a copy of “Switched-On Rock,” one of the most popular of the bunch, and when I saw a cheap one in the crates, I could not resist. Please enjoy what I hope is one of the strangest Beatles covers you’ll ever hear, centered around a Moog modular synthesizer just five years after it was invented. For all their overwhelming kitsch, there’s something I genuinely love about the “Switched-On” records and this era of electronic music in general, when there was a palpable sense of wonder (and slight confusion) about what these newfangled machines could actually do. (Listen on YouTube)2. Otis Redding: “Mr. Pitiful” (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go, 1966)A year before his untimely death, Otis Redding played a three-night, seven-show residency at the Whiskey a Go Go, the famed Los Angeles rock club that at that point didn’t book many soul acts as headliners. This quick, ecstatic performance of Redding’s own “Mr. Pitiful” is just a taste of the brilliance that the audience (which, according to the liner notes, on this particular night included Bob Dylan) witnessed at those shows. It comes from the 10-track “In Person at the Whiskey a Go Go,” which was released in 1968. But if you’re looking for more Otis (and really, who isn’t?), a comprehensive boxed set of the complete Whiskey recordings was released in 2016. (Listen on YouTube)3. John Cale: “Dead or Alive”Remember just a few weeks ago, when I sent out a newsletter about John Cale and raved about his 1981 post-punk record “Honi Soit”? Just days later, I managed to find a copy in Academy Records’ New Arrivals section! Record-shopping serendipity is a beautiful thing. (Listen on YouTube)4. Tim Hardin: “Don’t Make Promises”Tim Hardin, if you’re not acquainted, was a superbly talented folk singer-songwriter who lost his battle with addiction in 1980, at just 39. While he could have done a lot more, the work he left behind is sterling. This jaunty little tune is one of my favorites on a 1970 Golden Archives Series compilation — a record that I totally forgot I already owned. I have no regrets, though, since it was a dollar-bin find too good too pass up, and I’m sure I can locate a friend who wants it. (Listen on YouTube)5. Roger Miller: “Dang Me”Perhaps the best dollar I have spent this year was on an unscratched copy of the goofball country singer Roger Miller’s greatest hits. It is scientifically and psychologically impossible to stay in a bad mood while listening to Miller: I have tested this hypothesis many times over. Same goes for this zany video of Dick Clark interviewing him on a 1964 episode of “American Bandstand,” which gives Miller an opportunity to do his impression of a telephone. (Listen on YouTube)6. Chuck Berry: “Memphis, Tennessee”Speaking of value (and, oddly enough, telephone operators), I was pleased to find a two-LP compilation of Chuck Berry songs in the bargain bin for just $2. “Memphis, Tennessee” isn’t one of his hardest rockers, but it’s a favorite nonetheless. (Listen on YouTube)7. Kermit and Fozzie: “Movin’ Right Along”OK, maybe this was the best dollar I’ve spent this year: a pristine copy of the soundtrack from “The Muppet Movie.” The LP cover alone made me smile and filled me with memories of a movie I loved as a kid, but this particular bop was the one that really brought me back. At first I thought I would put it on the playlist as a lark, especially since there’s been a relative lightheartedness to today’s selections. But then, while scrutinizing the liner notes of “Switched-On Rock,” I noticed a wild coincidence: The keyboardist on that Moog record was Kenny Ascher, the jazz pianist and composer who co-wrote the songs on the “Muppet Movie” soundtrack with Paul Williams. So, unexpectedly, today’s playlist ends where it began. I will say it again: Record-shopping serendipity is a beautiful thing. (Listen on YouTube)Footloose and fancy free,Lindsay*The Academy Records Instagram boasted of the new space, “It’s bigger! It’s clean! It doesn’t smell weird!” As a loyal customer I would contest the implication that the previous Oak Street location smelled weird, but I can confirm that there was some lovely, musky incense burning at 242 Banker Street, so I will admit, at least on the day that I visited, that this new space is the best-smelling Academy Records Annex yet.The Amplifier PlaylistListen on Spotify. We update this playlist with each new newsletter.“Moogs and Muppets: Record Shopping in Brooklyn” track listTrack 1: The Moog Machine, “Get Back”Track 2: Otis Redding, “Mr. Pitiful (Live at the Whiskey a Go Go)”Track 3: John Cale, “Dead or Alive”Track 4: Tim Hardin, “Don’t Make Promises”Track 5: Roger Miller, “Dang Me”Track 6: Chuck Berry, “Memphis, Tennessee”Track 7: Kermit and Fozzie, “Movin’ Right Along”Bonus tracksA person dressed head-to-toe as Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. An inflatable boa constrictor worn around someone’s neck. An inflatable alligator crowd surfing. A Jerry Springer T-shirt worn in seemingly earnest tribute. (R.I.P.) These were just some of the things I saw on Saturday night, when I left the rational world behind and went to a sold-out 100 gecs show.100 gecs are the sonically anarchic duo of Laura Les and Dylan Brady; if you’re unfamiliar with them, my colleague Joe Coscarelli’s recent profile is a great primer. Their latest album, “10,000 gecs,” is a brash, frequently hilarious assault on good taste — and with each passing day I become more certain that it’s one of my favorites of the year. (See: the towering, Blink-182-esque “Hollywood Baby” or, in keeping with our Kermit theme, the absurdist and deliriously catchy “Frog on the Floor.”) Its appeal is perhaps impossible to explain (or, some might say, justify) but I keep coming back to an idea that the critic Julianne Escobedo Shepherd articulated in her astute review of the album for Pitchfork: “It’s a re-evaluation of the most déclassé and dunderheaded rock genres that roiled the 2000s, positing that when it’s not delivered by misogynistic frat guys, it can be terrific music. 100 gecs are speaking to and for the regressive ids of us all; dumb [expletive] should be inclusive too.” A lot of the punk-rock humor espoused by the bands I grew up with was, when you held it up to the light, woefully homophobic, sexist or racist — sometimes all of the above. Like Shepherd, I appreciate the more inviting inanity of this new generation of weirdos. As I realized, chanting “gecs! gecs! gecs!” among my fellow misfits on Saturday night: The kids are all right. More

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      Gordon Lightfoot, Hitmaking Singer-Songwriter, Is Dead at 84

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      His rich baritone and gift for melodies made him one of the most popular artists of the 1970s with songs like “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and “If You Could Read My Mind.”Gordon Lightfoot, the Canadian folk singer whose rich, plaintive baritone and gift for melodic songwriting made him one of the most popular recording artists of the 1970s, died on Monday night in Toronto. He was 84. His death, at Sunnybrook Hospital, was confirmed by his publicist, Victoria Lord. No cause was given.Mr. Lightfoot, a fast-rising star in Canada in the early 1960s, broke through to international success when his friends and fellow Canadians Ian and Sylvia Tyson recorded two of his songs, “Early Morning Rain” and “For Lovin’ Me.”When Peter, Paul and Mary came out with their own versions, and Marty Robbins reached the top of the country charts with Mr. Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness,” Mr. Lightfoot’s reputation soared. Overnight, he joined the ranks of songwriters like Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs and Tom Paxton, all of whom influenced his style.When folk music ebbed in popularity, overwhelmed by the British invasion, Mr. Lightfoot began writing ballads aimed at a broader audience. He scored one hit after another, beginning in 1970 with the heartfelt “If You Could Read My Mind,” inspired by the breakup of his first marriage.In quick succession he recorded the hits “Sundown,” “Carefree Highway,” “Rainy Day People” and “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which he wrote after reading a Newsweek article about the sinking of an iron-ore carrier in Lake Superior in 1975, with the loss of all 29 crew members.For Canadians, Mr. Lightfoot was a national hero, a homegrown star who stayed home even after achieving spectacular success in the United States and who catered to his Canadian fans with cross-country tours. His ballads on Canadian themes, like “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” pulsated with a love for the nation’s rivers and forests, which he explored on ambitious canoe trips far into the hinterlands.His personal style, reticent and self-effacing — he avoided interviews and flinched when confronted with praise — also went down well. “Sometimes I wonder why I’m being called an icon, because I really don’t think of myself that way,” Mr. Lightfoot told The Globe and Mail in 2008. “I’m a professional musician, and I work with very professional people. It’s how we get through life.”Performing in London in June 1973.Michael Putland/Getty ImagesGordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. was born on Nov. 17, 1938, in Orillia, Ontario, where his father managed a dry-cleaning plant. As a boy, he sang in a church choir, performed on local radio shows and shined in singing competitions. “Man, I did the whole bit: oratorio work, Kiwanis contests, operettas, barbershop quartets,” he told Time magazine in 1968.He played piano, drums and guitar as a teenager, and while still in high school wrote his first song, a topical number about the Hula Hoop craze with a catchy last line: “I guess I’m just a slob and I’m gonna lose my job, ’cause I’m Hula-Hula-Hoopin’ all the time.”After studying composition and orchestration at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles, he returned to Canada. For a time he was a member of the Singing Swinging Eight, a singing and dancing troupe on the television show “Country Hoedown,” but he soon became part of the Toronto folk scene, performing at the same coffee houses and clubs as Ian and Sylvia, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young and Leonard Cohen.He formed a folk duo, the Two Tones, with a fellow “Hoedown” performer, Terry Whelan. The duo recorded a live album in 1962, “Two Tones at the Village Corner.” The next year, while traveling in Europe, he served as the host of “The Country and Western Show” on BBC television.As a songwriter, Mr. Lightfoot had advanced beyond the Hula Hoop, but not by a great deal. His work “didn’t have any kind of identity,” he told the authors of “The Encyclopedia of Folk, Country and Western Music,” published in 1969. When the Greenwich Village folk boom brought Mr. Dylan and other dynamic songwriters to the fore, he said, “I started to get a point of view, and that’s when I started to improve.”In 1965, he appeared at the Newport Folk Festival and made his debut in the United States at Town Hall in New York. “Mr. Lightfoot has a rich, warm voice and a dexterous guitar technique,” Robert Shelton wrote in The New York Times. “With a little more attention to stage personality, he should become quite popular.”A year later, after signing with Albert Grossman, the manager of Mr. Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary, Mr. Lightfoot recorded his first solo album, “Lightfoot!” With performances of “Early Morning Rain,” “For Lovin’ Me,” “Ribbon of Darkness” and “I’m Not Sayin’,” a hit record in Canada in 1963, the album was warmly received by the critics.Real commercial success came when he switched to Warner Brothers, initially recording for the company’s Reprise label. “By the time I changed over to Warner Brothers, round about 1970, I was reinventing myself,” he told the Georgia newspaper Savannah Connect in 2010. “Let’s say I was probably just advancing away from the folk era, and trying to find some direction whereby I might have some music that people would want to listen to.”Lightfoot with his 12-string guitar at the 2018 Stagecoach Festival in Indio, Calif.Frazer Harrison/Getty Images for StagecoachMr. Lightfoot, accompanying himself on an acoustic 12-string guitar, in a voice that often trembled with emotion, gave spare, direct accounts of his material. He sang of loneliness, troubled relationships, the itch to roam and the majesty of the Canadian landscape. He was, as the Canadian writer Jack Batten put it, “journalist, poet, historian, humorist, short-story teller and folksy recollector of bygone days.”His popularity as a recording artist began to wane in the 1980s, but he maintained a busy touring schedule. In 1999 Rhino Records released “Songbook,” a four-disc survey of his career.Mr. Lightfoot, who lived in Toronto, is survived by his wife, Kim Hasse, six children — Fred, Ingrid, Miles, Meredith, Eric and Galen — and several grandchildren, according to Ms. Lord, his publicist. His first two marriages ended in divorce. His older sister, Beverley Eyers, died in 2017.In 2002, just before going onstage in Orillia, Mr. Lightfoot collapsed when an aneurysm in his abdominal aorta ruptured and left him near death. After two years spent recovering, he recorded an album, “Harmony,” and in 2005 he resumed his live performances with the Better Late Than Never Tour.“I want to be like Ralph Carter, Stompin’ Tom and Willie Nelson,” Mr. Lightfoot told the CBC in 2004. “Just do it for as long as humanly possible.”Vjosa Isai More