“The first time I was introduced to the song was when my mother and aunt Anna sang it at my grandmother’s funeral, with their sister Jane playing the organ. I would have just turned 16 years old at the time, and my grandmother was very important to me. Of course, it’s a beautiful love song too, but it really seemed to fit that occasion. The concept of the song and the lyrics are remarkably powerful, more than some of the songs from the same sort of era, which could be a little bit overly romantic or simplistic in some ways. “What’ll I Do” has an added layer.

“Some years later we decided to record it for The McGarrigle Hour, which, to me, is a really interesting record about family. The version of “What’ll I Do?” on that record is actually the only recording that’s ever been done on which my mother, my brother, my father and I sing together. It’s the only one of the four of us, and for that reason it’s heavy. And then of course the subject matter on top makes it even heavier, if you think about it from the perspective of a torn-up marriage. I really love how we sang it. For me, it feels very haunting. There’s something about how the way the four of us harmonised and sort of melded together to become the same person in the song.

“In some ways this song has helped me to accept death, and to accept how my family was as a dysfunctional unit. There’s a lot of love and layers to it.”

“Even though Joni’s canon is so famous, I didn’t know too many of her songs growing up. As Rufus has talked about before, we didn’t really listen to or talk about Joni Mitchell in our house when we were kids. It was not something that excited my mother to have to do, you know? And of course, being a tall-ish, sometimes blonde, singer/songwriter who plays the acoustic guitar myself, I did not want to be pegged as some sort of Joni Mitchell disciple at the beginning of my music career.

“My first roommate in New York was a huge Joni Mitchell fan, especially of her later-period jazz records. Up until that point I hadn’t really listened to her music that much, only the hits, so my understanding of Joni had been quite superficial. He listened to her excessively, so while on one level I loved the songs, on another level I rejected it all over again. But I was beginning to understand the intensity and the gravitas of her music.

“It’s only been recently, after Rufus covered “Both Sides Now” and “All I Want” for his record Northern Stars - his tribute to great Canadian songwriters - that I really started to listen and allow my ears to be open when they were closed to her before. Maybe out of envy or something, and not really wanting to deal with that. Of course, now I’m totally blown away by so many aspects of her songwriting. Her singing, her personality in her music and how heavy it is, how unafraid it is, and how devastating her lyrics could be.

“I remember being at the side of the stage at one of the shows where Northern Stars was recorded, listening to Rufus sing “Both Sides Now” and entangling myself in the curtains in tears. I was still very much in the clutches of the divorce and I was just so devastated by this song. The before and after concept was describing exactly how I felt, which was basically destroyed, so for me the song really took on this sort of midlife crisis mantle.

“The version that Joni recorded with an orchestra, 30 years after the original, is absolutely my favourite version. It’s crazy to think how a song can mean so much over such a huge period of time.”

“I borrowed a friend’s car recently to pick up some wood and stuff for some construction I’ve been doing with my partner. It’s a banged up old car that kind of stinks of cigarette smoke and has a broken CD player, and it just so happened that the CD that was stuck in the drive was Bob Dylan’s album Planet Waves that he recorded with The Band. “Forever Young” is one song that really came to mean a lot to me.

“It’s actually a beautiful story. I would pick up my son at his dad’s house to drive him to school in the mornings and we would blare this record all the way with the windows down. The route across town goes over this mountain that’s right in the middle of Montréal, and it was so beautiful to make that journey with him next to me. He’s eleven and he would normally take the bus to school, but because of Covid we ended up having all this extra time together. You know, it wasn’t my custody week and I was just so grateful to see him.

“Dylan wrote this song for his own son, but so much of it I can really relate to with mine. I remember looking at him while we were in the car listening to “Forever Young” and having this intense feeling of wanting him to be free and happy and to never be hurt in life. The funny thing is that after I dropped him off at school I would drive back over the same mountain and listen to the song alone, and in those instances I felt it was about me. I wanted Bob to tell me to stay forever young. He was a really cool companion on those drives.”

“I listened to Jane Siberry way more than Joni when I was younger. She was more my vibe when I was in my late teens, early twenties. When The Walking came out in 1987, I must have been 10 or 11 years old. I remember we had the cassette tape and I listened to it a lot. Much of the recording on The Walking is so courageous, and the way Jane uses her voice is so beautiful. I’ve had the opportunity to work with her a couple of times and she’s a really kooky lady. Quite mystical. Religious. She’s very thoughtful, and you can hear that in her music.

“This song in particular, I remember I would sing it to myself all the time because I loved the melody. Whenever I was outside, walking over the Brooklyn Bridge or whatever, I’d sing it. But I had the lyrics completely wrong! I thought she was singing “I go down to the laundromat” instead of “the lobby”. The next line is “They say take off that foolish hat” so I had to somehow made up this rhyme that I thought it was really fun - this image of a woman going out to wash her clothes in ridiculous headgear.

“About a year ago I was cleaning up in the back of the house here in Montréal - we have these huge storage spaces full of so much crazy archival weirdness, and a lot of crap. And while I was cleaning up a little, trying to make room for some more crap, I found that old cassette of The Walking. I got out the tape player I have for my son and listened back to it and I was just amazed by how beautiful it is. Hearing the record now, in my forties, was a totally different experience because it’s actually so sad and intense.

“To me “The Lobby” is a song about a woman who is an artist, maybe sort of manic depressive, and hugely misunderstood and made fun of. You really get the sense that this woman is fucking mad, and feels really isolated and angry, and I totally didn’t pick up on that at the time.”

“This song of my brother’s is sort of inspired by a song from the Stephen Sondheim musical, Company [famously performed by Broadway icon Elaine Stritch]. Musicals are not something that resonate with me per se, but my son likes them and together we got into Sondheim’s Into the Woods a little bit, which is kind of amazing but it’s not really my cup of tea.

“There are different ways to interpret the lyrics to this song. For me, it makes me think about women who maybe have nothing of substance going on in their lives and it makes them miserable. But that’s just my interpretation. I also chose this song because I really love the production on it. I love what Rufus does with his voice here, and how he allows the song structure to be kind of difficult. It’s not an easy song to listen to, in a way, and I like songs like that.”

Love Will Be Reborn is out now via Pheromone Records/Cooking Vinyl