Song Lyric of the Day (Melanie, on Those Who ‘Came to Keep the Dark Away’)

“Some came to sing, some came to pray
Some came to keep the dark away.”—Melanie, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” from her Candles in the Rain LP (1970)

Joni Mitchell, giving up the opportunity to travel to Woodstock at the insistence of her manager, who wanted her to appear on the Dick Cavett Show, wrote her song on her generation’s seminal event based on what she saw on a TV set in a Manhattan hotel room and on what boyfriend Graham Nash related afterward. Maybe that is why, to some extent, it still comes off as rather metaphysical. (“We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon.”)

In contrast, Melanie Safka, who turns 65 today, produced a song perhaps not as resonant in the long term, but more immediately visceral (“We were so close, there was no room/We bled inside each other‘s wounds“)—perhaps because she was there and was moved by the sight of the candles being lit after a downpour, letting the world know everything was okay. At the time this record was released, few other songs on the radio could match it for its passion and immediacy.

With time, of course, Melanie’s moment passed. Unlike the bohemian Mitchell, whose songs consistently re-enact her tug of war between intimacy and freedom, Melanie chose, by the mid-1970s, to recede from the music business to raise a family. Also unlike Mitchell, who passed through two marriages and numerous relationships in the years since Woodstock, Melanie stayed married to the same man until his death two years ago.

Melanie’s impact was short-lived, but it was huge while it was occurring. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Lady Gaga can all, in a sense, be regarded as musical offspring of Madonna. But in the current folk/pop/rock environment, it is impossible for me even to summon up another performer remotely resembling Melanie. And that speaks volumes—every note of it sad—about the contemporary musical scene.