"If You Could Read My Mind" is a song by Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot. It reached number one on Canadian music charts and was his first recording to appear on the American music charts, reaching number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart in January 1971. Later in the year, it reached number 30 in the UK. Lightfoot has cited his divorce for inspiring the lyrics, saying they came to him as he was sitting in a vacant Toronto house one summer.
This song first appeared on Lightfoot's 1970 album Sit Down Young Stranger. The success of the single led Lightfoot's label, Reprise Records, to retitle the album after the song. The song also reached number one for one week on the Billboard Easy Listening chart, and was the first of four Lightfoot releases to reach number one.
The song is in major and uses the subtonic chord.
"If You Could Read My Mind" was the favorite song of film actor John Holmes. It was used at the end of his biographical 2003 film Wonderland.
Read more about If You Could Read My Mind: Chart Performance, Other Versions
Famous quotes containing the words read and/or mind:
“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.... The quotations, when engraved upon the memory, give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”
—Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
“Time is a horse that runs in the heart, a horse
Without a rider on a road at night.
The mind sits listening and hears it pass.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)