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Melanie, the zephyr-voiced songstress who performed at the Woodstock musical festival in 1969 and topped the next decade’s charts with hits like “Brand New Key” and “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” died Tuesday, her family said. She was 76.
Her death was announced on Facebook by her children, Leilah, Jeordie, and Beau Jarred. The trio did not share a cause of death, but said that Melanie had “passed, peacefully, out of this world and into the next.”
“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 said. “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.”