Singer Melanie Safka, known as “The First Lady of Woodstock” for playing the 1969 festival at just 22 years also, and had hits in the 1970s including “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” has died. She was 76. Melanie’s kids, Leilah, Jeordie, and Beau Jarred, confirmed her death writing, “This is the hardest post for us to write, and there are so many things we want to say, first, and there’s no easy way except to say it… Mom passed, peacefully, out of this world and into the next on January, 23rd, 2024.”
A cause of death was not given.
They went on to say “She was one of the most talented, strong and passionate women of the era and every word she wrote, every note she sang reflected that,” they wrote. “Our world is much dimmer, the colors of a dreary, rainy Tennessee pale with her absence today, but we know that she is still here, smiling down on all of us, on all of you, from the stars."