Dan Hill to be Inducted in Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame

The Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame will honour Dan Hill with a virtual presentation on CTV’s Your Morning airing Wednesday, February 10, that will include an exclusive live performance by Dan featuring some of his defining hits.  Hill will be inducted to the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame’s permanent home in the National Music Centre in Calgary, featuring interactive exhibits and memorabilia dedicated to Canada’s greatest songwriters and songs.

“Dan’s songs are authentic and intimate, whether he is singing about love or social injustice,” says Vanessa Thomas, Executive Director of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.  “He may have a soft-spoken voice and sing to soft rock melodies, but his lyrics resonate as loudly and powerfully as if he were shouting it from the mountains. That is the gift that Dan has as an artist and songwriter.”

1977’s Sometimes When We Touch, and 1987’s Can’t We Try duet with American songstress Vonda Shepard, are among Hill’s most successful hits.  Sometimes was co-written with New York songwriter Barry Mann, and reached No. 1 in Canada and No. 3 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.  It garnered several SOCAN Awards as well as five JUNO Awards including Songwriter of the Year in 1979.  Can’t We Try was Billboard’s No. 1 Adult Contemporary Song of the Year for 1987, among many chart-topping singles and successful albums that Hill would produce.

Between 1986 and 1989, a Dan Hill hit could be found on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart (and usually the Canadian national chart) every week for an unparalleled four years. His hits included the romantic ballads In Your Eyes, Hold Me Now (with Rique Franks), All I See Is Your Face, Carmelia, Unborn Heart, I Fall All Over Again, and Never Thought That I Could Love, which also shot to No. 1 in Canada.

As Hill states in his 2009 bestselling memoir, “Right from the beginning, I’ve written songs simply because I’ve had no other choice.”  He began composing songs from the age of 14, and would also later pen articles for the Globe and Mail, Maclean’s, and Toronto newspapers including one entitled “On Being Black.”  Hill has often used his writing talents to share personal experiences on race, relationships, and socio-political commentary, such as the song, McCarthy’s Day (1977), about the courageous inter-racial relationship between his American-born parents.

His matchless talent is still in demand as he continues to write and record music including the 2009 album “Intimate,” and his topical 2020 single What About Black Lives? off his 2021 album “On The Other Side of Here”.  As Hill says, “There’s still a craving for real songs.  People still want to have old-fashioned songs with stories, strong melodies and relatable lyrics.”

More than four decades since the release of Sometimes When We Touch, the song continues to receive radio play and has been covered by numerous artists including Tammy Wynette, Oscar Peterson, Rod Stewart, Barry Manilow, Ginette Reno and Cleo Laine. Hill declared, “So many pop stars recorded it…that in a sense it didn’t belong to me any longer. It was bigger than me, bigger than life.”

Dan Hill has earned six ASCAP Awards and SOCAN’s William Harold Moon Award for international songwriting success. He published a best-selling memoir in 2009, I Am My Father’s Son: A Memoir of Love and Forgiveness, where he opens up about the relationship with his father, who was a social activist and later became the first Director of the Ontario Human Rights Commission; as well as with his brother Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes), and late sister Karen, who was also an accomplished poet.