Jimmy Cliff, Jamaican reggae singer, actor and cultural icon, dies aged 81
NEWS | 24 November 2025
Jimmy Cliff, the singer and actor whose mellifluous voice helped to turn reggae into a global phenomenon, has died aged 81. A message from his wife Latifa Chambers on Instagram reads: “It’s with profound sadness that I share that my husband, Jimmy Cliff, has crossed over due to a seizure followed by pneumonia. I am thankful for his family, friends, fellow artists and coworkers who have shared his journey with him. To all his fans around the world, please know that your support was his strength throughout his whole career … Jimmy, my darling, may you rest in peace. I will follow your wishes.” Her message was also signed by their children, Lilty and Aken. With hits including You Can Get It If You Really Want, I Can See Clearly Now and Wonderful World, Beautiful People, Cliff’s upbeat musical temperament brought him a large and longstanding fanbase. His lead acting role in 1972 crime drama The Harder They Come was also acclaimed, with the film seen as a cornerstone of Jamaican cinema. He is one of just a handful of musicians, alongside Bob Marley and others, to be awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit. Jamaican prime minister Andrew Holness was among those paying tribute to Cliff, calling him “a true cultural giant whose music carried the heart of our nation to the world … Jimmy Cliff told our story with honesty and soul. His music lifted people through hard times, inspired generations, and helped to shape the global respect that Jamaican culture enjoys today.” Cliff was born in Saint James, Jamaica in 1944, and his music career began in the early 1960s after he moved to the island’s capital Kingston and began collaborating with producer Leslie Kong. Kong’s family owned a record shop called Beverley’s and Cliff wrote a song namechecking it to help persuade Kong – who would go on to become key producer in reggae – to work with him. He had a number of local hits and was selected as a Jamaican representative at the World’s Fair expo in New York in 1964, but his career really took off later that decade after he signed to Island Records. He was initially marketed to a rock crowd – hence curios such as his cover of Whiter Shade of Pale – and found life in his new home of London alienating, later describing the city as “a bitch … I experienced racism in a manner I had never experienced before”. But the sparkling ska of 1969’s Wonderful World, Beautiful People proved to be his breakthrough UK hit, reaching No 6 in the charts. Its message of hope and unity carried with it a rebuke of the current state of the world (“cheating, backbiting, scandalising and hating”) and that blend of beautiful music and socially conscious lyrics became a core part of Cliff’s artistry. After writing Vietnam, a song pleading for the end to that war, Cliff later recalled: “The critics in London said, ‘Wow! How is he singing this kind of serious song and such a happy rhythm?’ And I said: Wow! I didn’t even realise I was doing that. I was just writing a song to a rhythm.” Cliff was back in the UK Top 10 in 1970 with a cover of Cat Stevens’s Wild World, before filming The Harder They Come in 1972, after the film’s director Perry Henzell intuited that he would make a good actor. Its soundtrack album, with Cliff performances such as the title track and You Can Get It If You Really Want alongside others by Desmond Dekker, Toots & the Maytals and more, helped to bring reggae to a wider audience, especially in the US where the film was eventually released in 1975. The film’s gangster milieu was familiar to Cliff, as he recalled in the Observer in 2022: “When I came to Kingston I lived in areas that were gangster-infested, and to be quite honest, the only thing that stopped me from joining those gangs full-time was I didn’t know where I would bury my head if my family heard that I was in Kingston firing a gun.” Cliff continued to tour and release albums in the 1970s, and had high-profile appearances in the US such as a booking on Saturday Night Live. He took some time away from music in the mid-late 1970s, travelling to Africa to reconnect with his ancestral roots, and converting to Islam: the 1978 album Give Thankx was partly inspired by those travels. Bruce Springsteen championed his song Trapped by playing it on tour in the early 1980s, and a live version appeared on the massive-selling charity album We Are the World. In 1994, he had a huge flush of new fame with his version of I Can See Clearly Now, which appeared on the soundtrack to the Jamaican bobsled drama film Cool Runnings: it returned him to the UK Top 40 for the first time since 1970, topped the French charts and was a hit elsewhere. Cliff collaborated with numerous other artists over the years from the Rolling Stones to Sting. More recently he worked with the lead singer of punk band Rancid, Tim Armstrong, on an EP and album, the latter winning a Grammy for best reggae album – one of two wins from seven nominations over the years. Cliff’s most recent album is 2022’s Refugees, made with Wyclef Jean, capping a discography of more than 30 studio albums. Despite the success of The Harder They Come, Cliff only occasionally returned to acting, most prominently with 1986’s Club Paradise, opposite Robin Williams, Rick Moranis and more.
Author: Ben Beaumont-Thomas.
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