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Melanie, Woodstock star and Brand New Key hitmaker, dies at 76
Melanie Safka, the voice behind ‘Candles in the Rain’
The music world lost one of its icons on Tuesday, when Melanie, the singer and songwriter with a distinctive husky voice, passed away at the age of 76. Her children announced her death in a Facebook post on Wednesday, saying that she died peacefully after an illness.
“This is the hardest post for us to write, and there are so many things we want to say, first, and there’s no easy way except to say it… Mom passed, peacefully, out of this world and into the next on January, 23rd, 2024,” the post reads.
Who was Melanie?
Melanie, whose full name was Melanie Safka, rose to fame after her performance at the Woodstock festival in 1969, when she was only 22 years old. She was a part of the New York folk scene and had never played for such a large audience before.
She later said that she was terrified to go on stage, but the sight of the crowd holding candles in the rain moved her deeply and inspired her to write one of her most popular songs, ‘Lay Down (Candles in the Rain).’
She recorded the song with the Edwin Hawkins Singers, who added a gospel touch to her folk style. The song reached No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1970 and became her first hit.
Her biggest hit, however, was ‘Brand New Key,’ which topped the charts in 1971. The song was a simple and catchy tune about a girl who wanted to skate with a boy who had the key to her skates. The song was controversial at the time, as some listeners and radio stations thought that the lyrics had a sexual meaning. Melanie denied that this was her intention and said that she wrote the song in a short time as a whimsical homage to the music of the 1930s.
She explained in an interview: “‘Brand New Key’ I wrote in about 15 minutes one night. I thought it was cute; a kind of old ’30s tune. I guess a key and a lock have always been Freudian symbols, and pretty obvious ones at that. There was no deep serious expression behind the song, but people read things into it.”
She was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2020 and received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the World Arts Foundation in 2021. She is survived by her three children, Leilah, Jeordie, and Beau Jarred, who are also musicians.
