Songfacts®:

• Gordon Lightfoot wrote "For Lovin' Me," which he called "probably the most chauvinistic song I ever wrote." He does come off as quite a cad, leaving a girl and, on the way out, letting her know that he's had a hundred more just like her and will have a thousand more before he's through. And that's not all: Just when her heart starts to mend, he'll be coming back around to break it again.
• "For Lovin' Me" was Gordon Lightfoot's first hit as a songwriter; he hadn't yet launched his solo career. The song was recorded by the folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary, who helped put Bob Dylan on the map with their cover of "Blowin' In The Wind." The song seems out of character for them, but it did well, rising to #30 in the US.
  
  "Peter Yarrow saw something in it, a tongue-in-cheek sort of approach to the situation," Lightfoot wrote in his Complete Greatest Hits collection. "Fortunately for me, it became a big hit. I was happy to have been a part of their career."
• Lightfoot was married at the time and later confessed that he'd been unfaithful. In 1970, he addressed his crumbling marriage on "If You Could Read My Mind," which became a huge hit. Around 2002, Lightfoot stopped performing "For Lovin' Me" out of respect for his first wife (he married two more times) and the daughter he had with her.
• The song helped get the attention of Bob Dylan's manager Albert Grossman, who took Gordon Lightfoot on as a client. With Grossman's help, Lightfoot released his first album, Lightfoot!, in 1966, with his own version of "For Lovin' Me" included.
• Peter, Paul and Mary recorded another Gordon Lightfoot song as well, "Early Morning Rain," which went to #91 later in 1965.