Like "I Heard It Through The Grapevine", Gordon Lightfoot's "The Circle Is Small (I Can See It In Your Eyes)" is about betrayal. And like "Grapevine", his complaint is about infidelity but his real problem is with indiscretion because he finds himself to be the last to know. Anyone with a circle of friends can understand just how fast those Chinese whispers become a chorus and yet no one really knows the story. Since repetition is everything when it comes to the choicest gossip, Gord is true to form here, repeating the chorus so often that it essentially switches roles with the verse.
He must have loved this song as much as I - or closely identified with its theme - because he recorded it twice: first in 1968 for his "Back Here On Earth" album, and again in 1978 for "Endless Wire". I wonder how we would approach it now in these days of multiple social networking sites, email, and instant messages.
The single peaked at #33, probably because everyone wants to hear a story unless the story is about them.
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