Correct!
When I stand before you, shining in the early morning sun...
Clue #1: Gordon Lightfoot had a gloomier take on his first album.
- "Early Morning Rain".
When I feel the engines roar, and I think of what we've done...
Clue #2: Gordon Lightfoot had a more down-to-earth take on his second album.
- "Engines" is also a term for locomotives, which Lightfoot wrote about in the song "Canadian Railroad Trilogy". This is kind of a double clue, though, because I included "down-to-earth" there also because "Coming Home" is about coming back down to earth.
Oh, the bittersweet reflection as we kiss the earth goodbye...
Clue #3: Gordon Lightfoot’s take ended up hitting No. 10 on the Hot 100.
- I could've added a little more to this clue, but the song is "Carefree Highway", which is about a man reflecting the past on the metaphorical road of his memories.
As the waves and echoes of the towns become the ghosts of time...
Clue #4: Gordon Lightfoot has a similar take, in both content and name, on his 1980 album.
- The word "ghosts" and the them of "waves" links up obviously with the seafaring number "Ghosts of Cape Horn", but there are two other songs on
Dream Street Rose, "Sea of Tranquility" and "On the High Seas", that bring forth water imagery.
Clue #5: This is another line-by-line clue game, but honestly the song we’re looking for is like a positive mirror to that first Gordon Lightfoot song in
Clue 1, completely the opposite of each other in tone and yet linked because they could be different POVs of the same event.
- "Coming Home" is a glorious ode to returning to land in an airplane, as the early morning sun lights up your way. Meanwhile, "Early Morning Rain" is about a man sitting outside of an airport, watching planes taking off at the runway while he sits there in the rain cold, broke, and drunk. The fact that they mirror each other so well as they could be the same exact event just from different perspectives really got me and I had to include this here. Crazy how music can tie together in the oddest of ways, isn't it?
Your turn!