“Until It’s Time for You to Go” by Buffy Sainte-Marie

Although it’s been covered by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Barbra Streisand to Shirley Bassey, “Until It’s Time for You to Go” bears the unquestionable signature of 1960s folk icon Buffy-Sainte Marie. The singer’s clear, lilting voice, which so easily finds livid intensity in her protest songs, flows sweetly through the simple lyrics. Sainte-Marie later referred to it as “just a song written by a girl in love,” but her words convey a bittersweet mixture of love and loss.

You could have stayed outside my heart, but in you came

And here you’ll stay, until it’s time for you to go

Don’t ask why, don’t ask how

Don’t ask forever, love me now

“Until It’s Time for You to Go” features Sainte-Marie’s throaty, ethereal vocals over an acoustic guitar, leaving a sparseness that intensifies the song’s melancholy. The lyrics don’t give an explanation for this imminent loss; it’s simply understood that there will be a time when her love has to end. In spite of the song’s mournful tone, however, at its heart is joy: the willingness to embrace that love for as long as she can.

Buffy Sainte-Marie in 1968

Rising to fame in the ’60s and ’70s, Sainte-Marie occupied the same circles as Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen and Neil Young, but the singer belongs in a category of her own. While some of her tracks feature the kind of flower-child croon and delicate guitar arrangements that were typical among folk darlings of that era, her musical inventiveness and fearless lyrics carved out a unique place for her as both a singer and an activist. Sainte-Marie fought tirelessly for the rights of Indigenous peoples throughout her career, and never hesitated to give voice to that fight through her music — even when it got her blacklisted from radio stations.

Perhaps because of this fortitude and temerity, the story Sainte-Marie tells in “Until It’s Time for You to Go” is not just that of another sad girl mourning lost love. It’s a much larger, more universal story, one grounded in resilience and maturity: The excruciating joy of discovering all the love and pain we can hold inside ourselves.

This love of mine had no beginning, it has no end

I was an oak, now I’m a willow, now I can bend

And though I’ll never in my life see you again

Still I’ll stay, until it’s time for you to go