Summer Side Of Life

Album: Summer Side Of Life (1971)
Charted: 98
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Songfacts®:

  • The summer side of life should be the best of times, when youth and opportunity collide into something wonderful. In this song, a guy is in his summer side, but it's ruined when he gets sent off to war.

    "It's about guys going away to fight in Vietnam; that's the whole driving thought behind it," Gordon Lightfoot wrote in his Complete Greatest Hits collection. "It's about saying goodbye to your girlfriend and your mother and not knowing if you're coming back - going through God knows what."
  • Lightfoot had a breakout hit with "If You Could Read My Mind" in 1970 from his fifth album, Sit Down Young Stranger. "Summer Side Of Life" is the title track to his next album, and like the other singles from the LP ("This Is My Song," "Talking in Your Sleep"), it didn't do nearly as well, with "Summer Side Of Life" failing to chart in most territories and barely making the list in America, where it peaked at #98. Lightfoot's next big hit came in 1974 with "Sundown."

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