Jimmy Cliff: 10 Essential Songs

Cliff wrote “The Harder They Come” as the theme song for rude boy archetype Vincent “Ivanhoe” Martin, the character he portrayed in filmmaker Perry Henzell’s gritty 1972 crime flick The Harder They Come. “At first, the title track was ‘Hard Road to Travel,’” Cliff recalled in 2012. “But one day we were talking about Ivanhoe, and Perry said: ‘The harder they come, the harder they fall,’ about his story. The line leapt out at me, so I wrote the song around it.” With a spry rhythm, uplifting chord changes, and Cliff’s memorable chorus, “The Harder They Come” captured Ivanhoe’s sense of determination in a way that transcended the film. Joe Jackson, Rockers Revenge, and Madness all covered the tune in the decades that followed. —Kory Grow

“Everyone at some point asks ‘Who am I? Why am I here? What am I going to do?’” Jimmy Cliff once mused, talking about the broad appeal of “Many Rivers to Cross.” The artist, who’d had hits in Jamaica in his young teens, started writing the song in the Sixties when he moved from Kingston to the U.K. and realized it was a lot harder to make it there. “I came full of vigor: I’m going to make it, I’m going to be up there with the Beatles and the Stones,” he recalled. “And it wasn’t really going like that, I was touring clubs, not breaking through. I was struggling, with work, life, my identity. I couldn’t find my place; frustration fuelled the song.” He transmuted his frustration into a stirring secular gospel song on his self-titled 1969 album and The Harder They Come soundtrack (1972). It resonated with UB40, Cher, and Annie Lennox who scored hits with their renditions of the tune. —K.G.

A maxim as profound as the Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” but far more hopeful, the jaunty 1970 single “You Can Get It If You Really Want” perfectly set up Jimmy Cliff’s career: Here is a man with a positive mental attitude and the willpower to rise above adversity, and he had a golden voice to match. The song didn’t chart anywhere, unlike his Cat Stevens cover “Wild World” or his own “Vietnam” and “Wonderful World, Beautiful People,” but it got a second life as the opening music in The Harder They Come, introducing the world to Cliff’s Jamaica. As the soundtrack’s lead single, the song became one of the artist’s career touchpoints. —K.G.

Cliff’s profound statement about Vietnam was inspired by his own grief over seeing a childhood friend changed by the war: “When he came back, he didn’t know me,” Cliff once said. “We met up in Somerton where they have aeroplanes that fly low to spray the banana trees, and I remember he started running for cover.” Over a disarmingly bouncy beat and melody (and a repeated chanting of the word “Vietnam” as the song’s ghostly refrain), Cliff tells a devastating tale of the war through a series of letters and telegrams sent back home. No less than Bob Dylan called it the best protest song ever written. —Jonathan Bernstein

On classics like “The Harder They Come,” Cliff injected a rich sense of bright exuberance into songs about struggle and hardship. But his 1969 cut “Wonderful World, Beautiful People” was pure world-hugging anthemic joy, tapping into the Aquarian spirit of that year with a song about the universal power of human togetherness — he even extends the good vibes to U.S. president Richard Nixon and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. Released on Jamaica’s iconic Trojan label, it brilliantly mixed a reggae groove with a stirring string arrangement, showing off Cliff’s unique ability to record reggae with an eye to the wider pop world. Fittingly, the song made the pop charts in the U.S. and the U.K. —Jon Dolan

Sometimes it’s worth playing the B side. “Trapped,” another song of spiritual resolve that Cliff wrote around the time he starred in The Harder They Come, initially came out in 1972 as the flipside to both “The Harder They Come” and “Struggling Man.” But despite its bona fides (Cat Stevens produced the tune, and orchestrater extraordinaire Del Newman arranged the backing track), the song languished in obscurity for almost a decade, until Bruce Springsteen started adding “a scintillating new song” to his set lists in 1981, as Rolling Stone put it: “‘Trapped,’ reportedly a Jimmy Cliff number reworked in the searing mode of Darkness on the Edge of Town.” The cover song stayed in Springsteen’s set, and a few years later, his live recording became a standout on the We Are the World compilation. Cliff re-recorded the song for 1989’s Images, this time releasing it as an A side. —K.G.

Reggae was a popular sound worldwide by the early Eighties, and Cliff was one of its elder statesmen. In 1982, he released a concert film affirming his connection to the music’s roots — and an album called Special, where he gamely embraced its present and future. The brightly produced single “Treat the Youths Right” brings his signature sunny demeanor to an anthem of encouragement for a new generation of Jamaicans. As often in Cliff’s music, there’s a hint of social commentary underneath the radiant chorus, as he nods to rising unemployment and issues a friendly warning: “Treat the youths right, or you’ll be playing with dynamite.” —Simon Vozick-Levinson

Jimmy Cliff’s biggest hit of the Eighties is a feel-good jam about jamming ’til the morning light on a reggae night. Cowritten by La Toya Jackson and Kool and the Gang’s Amir Bayyan, the song bears all the hallmarks of Eighties pop hits (soft-baked synths, a heavy backbeat, and bright brass filigrees), but Cliff makes it his own with his silky-smooth vocals and the conviction in his voice about just how important it is to let loose and embrace a night of good music and great vibes. The song, which appeared on Cliff’s album The Power and the Glory (1983), became an international hit (Number One in New Zealand!) and a concert staple for him until his final tour in 2019. —K.G.

Texas-born singer Johnny Nash’s 1972 tune “I Can See Clearly Now” was the first song with a distinct reggae influence to become a major hit in America, eventually reaching Number One on the Hot 100 and selling a million copies. The song mixed cloud-clearing optimism and gentle realism (when “the rain is gone,” Nash sings that he “can see all obstacles in my way”). Two decades later, another essential early-Seventies reggae ambassador, Jimmy Cliff, covered the song for the soundtrack to the 1993 movie Cool Runnings. With a new, hip-hop-tinged groove, Cliff’s gorgeously sung version returned “I Can See Clearly Now” to the Top 20. —J.D.

The 2010s were a decade of joyful renewal for Cliff, who started the party at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction and kept it going through the aptly titled 2012 album Rebirth, produced by Rancid’s Tim Armstrong. Nearing 70, he sang about his commitment to his craft with a vigor that transcended age: “I got one more song I must sing.” Live performances from that year showed his undiminished energy onstage. “He just loves performing,” Armstrong told Rolling Stone. “Whether it’s playing in front of three people or 30,000, he’s bringin’ it.” —S.V.L.