Cathy Young, 1974 JUNO Winner, Releases New Single I DON'T WANT TO LOSE YOU
Her career includes a Billboard Pick of the Week debut album and a role in Jesus Christ Superstar.
Cathy Young, who won the JUNO Award for Best New Artist in 1974, has released a new single titled I DON'T WANT TO LOSE YOU, which she has described as the most personal song of her career. Young was a fixture of Toronto's Yorkville music scene decades before the rise of streaming platforms, working alongside artists who helped shape Canadian music history.
Her story has since been documented in Music from Far and Wide: Celebrating 40 Years of the Juno Awards and in Bill King's Talk: Conversations in All Keys, and she was inducted into the Friar's Music Museum in Toronto.
For all of that history, Young has never been the kind of artist who simply rests on accolades. She has spent decades quietly recording, mentoring emerging talent, and staying connected to the music community that shaped her, even as the industry's spotlight moved elsewhere.
'I Don't Want to Lose You' was written by Young in 1974, though she says at the time it was written to no one in particular. 'Songs just come to me when they come,' she explains. 'They come in a rush, and if I don't stop whatever I'm doing, even sleep, and write, I will lose it forever.' It would take 50 years for the song to find the person it was truly meant for.
That person was a fellow musician Young first met briefly at the Juno Awards decades earlier. Their paths crossed again years later when she recorded backing vocals for his band, then drifted apart until an unplanned social media post changed everything. 'One day, almost on a whim, I posted a photo of a horse drawn Cinderella carriage on Facebook and wrote, 'Now all I need is a groom',' Young recalls. 'It wasn't something I would normally post. In fact, I nearly deleted it, but something told me to leave it.' He saw it. His reply was simple: 'I'm here! I'm here!' What followed, Young says, was the beginning of a beautiful love story.
Not long after reconnecting, Young sang him the song she had written half a century earlier. 'When I finished, he looked into my eyes and quietly said, 'How could I not love you,'' she says. 'From that moment on, the song belonged to us.' The lyrics themselves carry that same plainspoken devotion: 'So come and put your arms around me, tell me you love me, tell me you need me, and no one else will ever do. I've given you my everything, and even more, I've opened up my heart and let you in.'
Young went on to join him on what would become his final tour before he passed away suddenly from a heart attack. 'In an instant, my world changed forever,' she says. 'I truly believe he was my soulmate. This song is my tribute to him, to the extraordinary love we were blessed to share. I know that one day we will meet again. Until then, I will carry him in my heart and celebrate a once in a lifetime love that not even time can erase.'
Written by Young and produced by John Zych, Ann Hunter, and Dennis Nieves, 'I Don't Want to Lose You' is released through Bronte Road Music, with a new EP on the horizon. It arrives as both a deeply intimate tribute and a reminder that one of Canadian music's true trailblazers, a woman who shared stages and studios with legends and helped shape an entire era of Yorkville's music history, is still very much writing her story, one unforgettable chapter at a time.
Young's career includes a debut album, A SPOONFUL OF CATHY YOUNG, which was named a Billboard Pick of the Week, along with a JUNO nomination for Best Female Vocalist the year following her win. She portrayed Mary Magdalene in Robert Stigwood's production of JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR, contributed her voice to video games in the Black Mirror series, and toured internationally across the United States, Mexico, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Thailand, Australia, the Caribbean, and Hawaii. In 2017, she was honored with a place on a 22-story mural of music icons along Toronto's Yonge Street.
