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Who Is Gordon Lightfoot? Grey Cup Viewers Do Not Know Who Canadian Musician Is

Grey Cup Viewers Ask: Who Is Gordon Lightfoot?
Gordon Lightfoot performs during the half-time show at the CFL Grey Cup championship football game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Calgary Stampeders Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012, in Toronto. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick)
AP
Gordon Lightfoot performs during the half-time show at the CFL Grey Cup championship football game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Calgary Stampeders Sunday, Nov. 25, 2012, in Toronto. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Sean Kilpatrick)

Who is Gordon Lightfoot?

Many Grey Cup viewers asked this question on Twitter during the Canadian singer's halftime show performance Sunday night.

Lightfoot, 74, kicked off the set with a performance of his 1967 hit "Canadian Railroad Trilogy," while younger acts Marianas Trench, Carly Rae Jepsen and pop phenom Justin Bieber waited in the wings.

Toronto blogger Matt Elliott was quick to point out this trend, tweeting, "Despair, Canada. Despair." Elliott also attached a screen grab of some "Who is Gordon Lightfoot?" tweets.

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Lightfoot is an internationally-renowned Canadian signer-songwriter, best known for his folk and folk-rock hits like "If You Could Read My Mind" and "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

CFL commissioner Mark Cohon told the Canadian Press last week that he planned for the 100th Grey Cup halftime show to get "new and young Canadians into the game."

"The decision was strategic in making sure we get young people to think about the next year, and the next 100 years," said Cohon. "This is about getting a new audience into the Grey Cup and the CFL."

At the very least, from the looks of those Lightfoot-related tweets and the associated mentions of Bieber or Jepsen, the CFL successfully attracted a younger audience with their halftime show picks.

A similar take on this "Who is..." Twitter trend happened earlier this year, when astronaut Neil Armstrong died in August.

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