Talk:Sundown (Gordon Lightfoot song)

Fair use rationale for Image:Sundown45.jpg

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BetacommandBot 19:44, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Newer cover version

Any idea who did the cover version that appears at the very end of the CSI: NY episode "Manhattanhenge" (season 6, ep. 9, Dec. 2009)? — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(^Õل^ō)ˀ Contribs. 11:23, 10 January 2010 (UTC)

Long Article on the Writing of Sundown in the WSJ

There is a long article in the WSJ including an interview with Gordon Lightfoot on how he came to write Sundown.

I was living with a woman named Cathy. We first met in 1971 at a country & western lounge in Toronto’s Edison Hotel. I went there to hear an artist backing singer George Jones. At some point, I looked across the bar and saw her. Cathy was beautiful. When she passed me, I said hello. On her way back, she stopped to talk. We made a date to go out and before long we moved in together. Two years later, up at the Aurora farmhouse, our relationship was fading. My first wife and I were separated and soon to be divorced. I didn’t want to jump back into marriage. Cathy was resentful or bored. Either way, we weren’t getting along.

Late one afternoon in July, Cathy said she was going into Aurora for a night with her Toronto girlfriends. I wasn’t happy about that. Neither of us had been prudent about some of the things we had done in the relationship. After she left, I watched the sun set slowly out back. I felt tremendous jealousy. Once the ball of orange disappeared behind the hills, I grabbed my Gibson B-45 12-string guitar and began writing a song. I came up with an E chord to use as a drone behind a melody. You can hear the drone chord throughout the song. That chord was my dread about what Cathy was up to at the local bars. By then, I was sitting at my desk with the guitar in my lap looking out at my front yard toward the road with a pad and pen.

I wrote “Sundown” using just three chords. Once I had the melody, the lyrics came pretty quickly. Songs have way of pulling themselves forward. Given the jealousy and emotional trauma I felt, I knew my relationship with Cathy was in trouble. As I wrote, I couldn’t help imagining that Cathy was chatting up guys. That image turned up in the opening verse: “I can see her lying back in her satin dress / In a room where you do what you don’t confess.” The same goes for “She’s been lookin’ like a queen in a sailor’s dream / And she don’t always say what she really means.” “A queen in a sailor’s dream”—I was happy with that line. It’s one of my favorites in the song. The chorus—“Sundown, you better take care / If I find you been creepin’ ’round my back stairs”—was aimed at the imaginary guy she met. If you’re gonna pick up my girl, don’t show up at my house, please. “Sometimes I think it’s a shame / When I get feelin’ better when I’m feelin’ no pain.” That’s about drinking to numb the emotional pain. “I can picture every move that a man could make / Getting lost in her lovin’ is your first mistake.” In those lines, I’m imagining guys checking her out.

The sunset was so beautiful that evening it made me mellow and aware of what I was feeling and how saving the relationship was pretty much impossible. But I was happy the relationship was winding down. You can hear my two different emotions in the song—a sense of blues and relief. Once I got going on a song, I usually didn’t stop until it was done.Cathy returned alone by 2 a.m. All of that stuff I had cooked up in my head—it was imaginary. When she came in, I had finished “Sundown” and was already on to another.

I will leave it to others to decide how much of this new information to incorporate into the main artcle.

2600:1700:DC50:5560:99D:9CE:E321:A654 (talk) 16:54, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

"Sundown" is Gordon Lightfoot's version of "Honky Tonk Woman" and "You Shook Me All Night Long"

This section isn't so much about logistical issues on the page as much as an observation about the song. That is, "Sundown" comes across as a softer, tamer version of the Rolling Stones' Honky Tonk Women and AC/DC's You Shook Me All Night Long. This is evident as "Sundown" follows a similar chord progression to that of "You Shook Me" for the opening melody (F#/G-F#/G-F#/G-C#/D-C#/D-C#/D). Furthermore, all three songs seem to deal with being intimate with women in different circumstances. Lightfoot just chooses a less raunchy approach than his British and Australian counterparts. Still, it would be interesting to hear a more hard-rocking version of "Sundown," with potentially raunchier lyrics. Anyway, that's just my observation. Wiscipidier (talk) 18:48, 6 April 2024 (UTC)