Yes, and it’s precisely as a song that it doesn’t work for me.
I just started watching her vids a few days ago, and that was one I saw.
“Superior they said, never gives up her dead, when the gales of November come early” was the theme of that one - why the bodies aren’t easily found and recovered.
There are, in fact, quite a lot of songs with that meter, and any of them can be sung to the tune of any other. Other notable entries in the category include “Amazing Grace”, “House of the Rising Sun”, “The Yellow Rose of Texas”, everything Emily Dickenson ever wrote, and the Gilligan’s Island theme.
Yeah, I love Gordon Lightfoot, except for that song.
(Hey, folks, try his other stuff. It has choruses and tempo changes and even a beat!)
By the way, Edmund himself ended up in a nursing home where my mom worked. The line the nurses used was “Poor guy, sort of went down with his ship.”
I just watched this. Interesting stuff, thanks! I’ll have to watch some more of her videos.
I was an AM Top 40 jock in the 1970s, and a big Lightfoot fan. Imagine playing that song every couple of hours, day after day, week after week, until it finally dropped off the charts. After the first week, we were all ready for that ship to sink. It was an epic album track that should never have been released as a single. Story-songs have a common problem: Once you’ve heard the story two or three times, you don’t want to hear it again. As such, ol’ Eddy was an audience-chaser, a ratings killer, just as “El Paso” and “Big Bad John” probably were in their day. I saw Lightfoot two times in concert during his hot period, and he was great. I have lots of his albums and many of his songs are dear to me. But I never, ever want to heard “Edmund” again.
Not to drag this thread too far off topic, but I just had to share this:
Continuing the hijack - years ago, we were in Las Vegas and caught a minor comic with a guitar (no idea who after all this time). Thanks him, I default the lyrics of “Pinball Wizard” to the melody for “Folsom Prison Blues”. Not sure if the whole song fits, but it is awesome right through “sure plays a mean pinball”.
Did it sound anything like Puddles?
I find it to be a catchy tune, one that’s likely to be an ear worm if I’ve listened to it recently, but like you, I don’t find it hugely compelling.
“Imagine” also works well to the tune of Folsom Prison.