Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, best known for folk-pop hits such as If You Could Read My Mind and The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, has died at the age of 84, a representative of his family said.
His long-time publicist Victoria Lord said Lightfoot died at a Toronto hospital on Monday evening. The cause of death was not immediately available.
Lightfoot, from Orillia in Ontario, rose to fame in the early 1960s after a move to Toronto inspired by the music of Bob Dylan opened doors to the thriving Yorkville music scene.
His 1965 debut album Lightfoot! ushered in a new folk voice and by the turn of the decade, he had moved into the pop scene, making his first appearance on the Billboard chart with 1971’s If You Could Read My Mind.
Known for his evocative lyrics and melodic compositions, Lightfoot received five Grammy nominations over the years and won 17 Juno awards, Canada’s equivalent.
Lightfoot’s popularity peaked in the mid-1970s when both his single and album Sundown topped Billboard – his first and only time doing so.
In the 2019 documentary Gordon Lightfoot: If You Could Read My Mind, singer Geddy Lee said: “He is our poet laureate, he is our iconic singer-songwriter.”
Lightfoot suffered several health problems during his career, including Bell’s palsy, alcoholism, and a ruptured artery in his stomach that put him in a coma for six weeks in 2002.
Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report
