YMMV / Cat Stevens

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• Covered Up:
  • Let's just say that more people have heard the many famous covers of "The First Cut Is The Deepest" than Cat's original.
  • The Tremeloes' version of his song "Here Comes My Baby" is almost certainly the best known.
• Fandom Rivalry: With Salman Rushdie after Islam expressed a lack of sympathy for Rushdie amid the death threats he got. Also extends to U2 after U2 collaborated with Rushdie to make an album tie-in for Rushdie's novel The Ground Beneath Her Feet.
• Growing the Beard: Both literally and figuratively after his first couple albums.
• Retroactive Recognition: The flute on "Katmandu" is played by a young Peter Gabriel.
• Signature Song: Most likely "Wild World" and "Father and Son", but also "Peace Train", "Moonshadow" and his cover of "Morning Has Broken" qualify.
  • "The Wind", while not a hit single, has become an extremely popular album track.
• Song Association: Modern audiences would be hard-pressed to listen to "Father and Son" without thinking of Yondu's funeral at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Father and Son". The song is about a father and his son arguing over an undisclosed choice that the son is making. Cat sings both parts: the father's calm, even demeanor as he tries to explain things to his son, and the son's emotional outbursts against the interference in his life. The son's pieces are particularly difficult to listen to, because aside from the evident pain and distress in his voice, his words are heart wrenching:
    "How can I try to explain? When I do, he turns away again. It's always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk, I was ordered to listen. Now there's a way, and I know, that I got to go away..."
  • "Trouble" is very gloomy, and it's about suicide. "Trouble, oh trouble can't you see, you have made me a wreck won't you leave me in my misery?"
    • The song is even sadder in the context of it's usage at the end of Harold and Maude after Maude kills herself upon turning eighty.
  • "Moonshadow" is another one.

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