“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot

Gordon Lightfoot wrote "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" to memorialize the bulk carrier that went down in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, and he put it on Summertime Dream the next year. He produced it with Lenny Waronker for Reprise, and it's folk rock cast as an old-fashioned sea ballad, a grave telling that lets the story do the work.

It went to number 1 in Canada, number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number one on the Cashbox Top 100. Lightfoot recut it in 1988 for Gord's Gold, Vol. 2, and after his death in 2023 it climbed to number twenty on Billboard's Hot Rock & Alternative Songs chart. The Great Lakes Maritime Academy's yearly memorial rings its bell 29 times for the men lost, then once for all lives lost at sea and once for Lightfoot.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.