Rod McKuen, wildly successful poet and songwriter, is dead at 81

Before Rod McKuen essentially stopped publishing his poems and recording albums in 1981, he was a pop culture juggernaut, a sort of middlebrow Renaissance man, selling more than 60 million of his poetry books and tens of millions of copies of his 200 music and spoken-word albums. At the peak of his career, in the 1960s and '70s, McKuen was "the unofficial poet laureate of America," according to the St. James Encyclopedia of Popular Culture. He died on Thursday in Beverly Hills, after a battle with pneumonia, at age 81.

McKuen collaborated with Belgian songwriter Jacques Brel on a string of well-known songs, including "If You Go Away" and "Seasons in the Sun," and Frank Sinatra commissioned and recorded an album of his songs, A Man Alone (1969). He was nominated for Academy Awards for the title songs to A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), and won a Grammy for his spoken-word album Lonesome Cities (1968). He acted in TV shows and movies. As a budding poet in the 1950s, McKuen read his work alongside Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other Beat poets.

His prolific work made him wealthy and famous, but the critics were not particularly kind. As to why he took a long break starting in the '80s, "I was tired," he told the Chicago Tribune in 2001. "I peaked. I left when I was on top." Below, you can watch McKuen sing "Seasons in the Sun," his translation of Brel's "Le Moribond" and a hit for Terry Jacks in 1974. —Peter Weber

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up