English singer-songwriter Yusuf/Cat Stevens’ hit song “Father and Son” off his 1970 album Tea for the Tillerman is the quintessential Father’s Day song. The song follows a story of an exchange between a father who does not understand his son’s desire to break away and start a new life and a song who knows that it’s time to live on his own terms.
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American singer-songwriter Harry Chapin’s folk-rock track “Cat’s in the Cradle” from his 1974 album Verities & Balderdash features a story about a man who becomes a father and is unable to spend time with the child due to his work. The same situation occurs when the father is old and wants to spend time with his son, however this time it is the son who doesn’t have the time due to his own kids and job.
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Initially penned for the 2002 family film The Wild Thornberrys Movie, American singer-songwriter Paul Simon also wrote the acoustic-leaning track “Father and Daughter” as an ode to his daughter and expresses the singer’s hopes and dreams for his daughter.
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Recorded in 1973 by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, “Forever Young” narrates the hope a father that his child will stay strong and happy. Dylan wrote the track for his eldest son Jesse.
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On his 1998 album Pilgrim, British singer-guitarist Eric Clapton includes a song entitled “My Father’s Eyes,” which he wrote in 1991. The song is inspired by the fact that Clapton never met his father, Edward Fryer, who died of leukemia in 1985. The song is also a reference to Clapton’s own song Conor, who he lost in 1991 at the age of four after he fell from an apartment window.
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