Songwriter for the stars: 6 Shirley Eikhard songs you should know

Shirley Eikhard’s name might not be on the tip of your tongue when it comes to Canadian songwriters, but the musician’s fingerprints are everywhere if you start digging.

The Sackville, New Brunswick-born singer-songwriter, who died at the age of 67, signed to Capitol Records when she was just a teenager. By 1971, when Eikhard was 15, Anne Murray had recorded Eikhard’s song “It Takes Time,” marking the songwriter’s first Canadian chart hit. In 1972, Eikhard released her debut, self-titled album, introducing people to her powerful voice and songwriting, and the following year she won her first Juno Award, for best country female artist — which she would go on to win again the following year.
While Eikhard would continue to make music her entire life — she released 18 full-length albums between 1972 to 2021 — she preferred to stay out of the spotlight. “Regardless of her many accomplishments, Shirley was a very modest woman; and although she was so talented, the reasons those around her loved her so deeply — the reason we are heartbroken today — were not connected to her gifts. They were connected to her character,” reads the beautifully written obituary on the musician’s website.

But while living that modest life in Ontario, where she moved with her parents in her pre-teens, Eikhard continued to send her songs into the world. She wrote more than 500 in her lifetime, and many of those songs found homes with very recognizable names.

Below, we take a look at six big artists who were fortunate enough to record a Shirley Eikhard song for their catalogues.

Chet Atkins: ‘Pickin’ my Way’ (1970)

The title track for Atkins’ 41st studio album, “Pickin’ my Way” was one of Eikhard’s earliest successes. Atkins, a guitarist who helped develop the Nashville sound in the 1950s, gives the song an instrumental twist and sticks to the spirit of the title, using his impressive guitar pickings on the Eikhard track to close out a 10-song tracklist that includes versions of Simon & Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and Paul McCartney’s “Junk.”

Anne Murray: ‘It Takes Time’ (1971)

By 1971, it had been two years since Murray released one of her biggest hits, “Snowbird,” on her second album, This Way is my Way. Eikhard was only 15 at the time, but both she and Murray were Capitol Records signees — and when Murray chose Eikhard’s “It Takes Time” for her fourth album, Straight, Clean and Simple, she gave Eikhard her first Canadian hit, getting to No. 1 on the Canadian Adult Contemporary chart.

Emmylou Harris: ‘Good News’ (1983)

The incomparable Emmylou Harris had been winning Grammy Awards for years by the time she released her 10th studio album, White Shoes, which included the Eikhard-penned track “Good News.” The sparse strumming and brightness of the electric piano give just the right amount of space for Harris’s vocals and Eikhard’s lyrics; it’s a perfect pairing.

Alannah Myles: ‘Kick Start my Heart,’ (1989)

A sharp turn from both “It Takes Time” and “Good News,” “Kick Start my Heart” is a gritty, punch-it-out rock song that was released on Alannah Myles’s self-titled debut album, placed three songs on the tracklist after the Grammy- and Juno-winning song “Black Velvet.” Eickhard was a co-writer on the track, and the album would eventually sell more than one million copies.

Bonnie Raitt: ‘Something to Talk About’ (1991)

It was absolutely impossible to miss this song if you were alive in 1991, but it took years for “Something to Talk About” to find a home. Eikhard wrote it in Nashville in 1985, according to Coast Reporter, and sent it to Murray’s management, who kept it for a year but eventually let it go. Eikhard kept sending it out, and six years later she returned to her Ontario home to a message on her machine: it was Bonnie Raitt, who had been singing the song and wanted to include it on her next album, Luck of the Draw.

“Right when I needed it, I found the cassette [that Eikhard had sent], played the song and knew it was a catchy, smart and fresh way of looking at romance — playful and something I really hadn’t done before,” said Raitt.

The song would win Raitt a Grammy Award for best female pop vocal performance, and a Juno nomination for Eikhard — and, almost 30 years later, an induction into the Canadian Songwriters’ Hall of Fame. It would also allow Eikhard to live the life she wanted: one that didn’t include performing.

“Bonnie Raitt’s breakthrough hit of ‘Something to Talk About’ allowed Shirley to retreat to the country, take care of her cats, write in peace and never get on a stage again,” wrote publicist and former Mariposa Folk Festival artistic Richard Flohil on Facebook, after learning of Eikhard’s death.

We’d argue that while Raitt’s performance is the most famous, Eikhard’s is just as — if not more — affecting.

Cher: ‘Lovers Forever’ (1994/2013); ‘Born With the Hunger’ (2000)

Maybe the most unexpected collaboration on this list, “Lovers Forever” is a frenetic dance track that Cher and Eikhard co-wrote for the 1994 film Interview with the Vampire, though ultimately it wasn’t used.

“They didn’t love it and there were no other vampire outlets then, so I held it,” Cher told Yahoo! Entertainment. The pop singer included the track on her 2013 album, Closer to the Truth, and it was the only song on that album that Cher wrote, as she noted in the same interview that she prefers not to record the songs she’s written because they’re “moody and introspective, a bit dark and very personal. I write about Kurt Cobain’s death and homeless people. It’s not for everybody.”

That means that the first song the public heard from Eikhard and Cher as a team was actually “Born With the Hunger,” from Cher’s 2000 album, not.com.mercial. It’s a sparser, bluesy track that really lets Cher’s vocals shine, and more than 20 years later you could see someone like Orville Peck covering it.