The Legend of Snowbird

Locutus

Adorable Deplorable
Jun 18, 2007
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Back in 1970 you couldn’t walk into a Woolworth’s, Eaton’s or a Ponderosa without hearing Anne Murray cheerily singing “spread your tiny wings and fly away” on the speakers. The song, “Snowbird,” was a worldwide hit. It made Anne Murray a star, and made P.E.I.’s Gene MacLellan a famous and successful songwriter. However, beneath that sunny song there was an extremely dark and cryptic lyric that contrasted with Anne’s sunny delivery.

How Gene MacLellan actually wrote Snowbird is a topic of great debate back on Prince Edward Island. According to MacLellan biographer David Sheffield: “The legend of Snowbird is huge… every third person on PEI has a version of how and where the song was written. While there are similarities between the stories, the one thing they have in common is that the teller believes that their version is the truth.”

Catherine MacLellan herself has said that the song profoundly changed her life, saying “That song changed my life on every level. If he hadn’t written that song when he did or he hadn’t done well, who knows, I might not even be here!”

“Snowbird” has been called “the greatest suicide note ever written,” which as Sheffield points out, is a “particularly poignant” description given Gene’s death by suicide in 1995. No matter how happily Anne Murray sings it, it is certainly a sad song. He writes of missing days gone by (“When I was young my heart was young then, too/And anything that it would tell me, that’s the thing that I would do”), the sad reality of growing up (“But now I feel such emptiness within”), being spurned by someone who is unfaithful (“The one I love forever is untrue”) and the subsequent desire to get away from himself (“And if I could you know that I would fly away with you.”)
However, Sheffield believes that Snowbird isn’t solely about about being left by a lover. To him, it’s goes deeper than that. “There’s a sense that the intimacy that we all long for will never be found in this life. In that way it’s really about a longing for transcendence, that freedom to ‘fly away.’”

I told a few colleagues of mine that I was going to write about this song, about how sad it really is and most had no idea it was a sad song. They hummed a few bars to themselves and realized, this is about as depressing a song that ever became a hit. I don’t think you truly understand the emotion, the darkness behind this song until you hear it performed by Gene’s daughter Catherine, or by her ex-partner Al Tuck. Both do an incredible version of showing the true emotion behind a song most people just smile through. Check out Catherine’s version, Tuck’s version, and Kathleen Edwards and Bahamas‘ version of Al Tuck’s take below.


The Legend of Snowbird | Gene MacLellan




Catherine MacLellan - Snowbird (Live in the Bing Lounge) - YouTube


Anne Murray - Snowbird - YouTube
 

#juan

Hall of Fame Member
Aug 30, 2005
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The song that matters is the one Anne Murray sung and made a hit out of.