Carefree Highway - Gordon Lightfoot (1974) 1/25/21

An old Rand McNally Road Atlas might tell you that Arizona State Route 74 runs from just south of Wickenburg and ends in the northern suburbs of Phoenix. The highway is just over 30 miles long, and is known for its scenery, with beautiful desert landscapes featuring large saguaro cacti and other desert plants.

A 12-mile stretch of the road—from I-17 to Tom Darlington Drive (in the town of Carefree), is aptly known as the “Carefree Highway.”

Gordon Lightfoot discovered it while driving through Arizona one day and thought that would make a GREAT song title. So he sat down and wrote today's “Great Song of 1974!”

But not right away.

It took Gordon 8 months to come up with a song that he thought was worthy of the title, and it turned out to be autobiographical.

In his younger days, Gordon was in love with a girl named Ann...but it didn't work out, and the song is about the way his mind would wander back to those days and what could have been. It's a rather sad and wistful song that incorporates “carefree highway” in a very ironic way.

Of course the song was a HUGE hit in his native Canada: #1 on The Adult Contemporary and Country Charts and #11 on the Top 40. It also did very well in the US: #1 on Billboard's Easy Listening Chart and #10 on the Hot 100.

“Carefree Highway:” PAVING the way to a “Great Song of the '70s” by Gordon Lightfoot. (See what I did there?) :-)

From 1974: