"Song for Adam" is a song by Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone....

 from this 1972 debut album Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne (album)

Jackson Browne is the self-titled debut album of singer Jackson Browne released in 1972. It peaked on the Billboard 200 chart at number 53. Two singles were released with "Doctor My Eyes" peaking at number 8 on the Pop Singles chart and "Rock Me on the Water" reaching number 48.-History:Browne had...

. On the surface it tells of the mournful memory of a long lost friend Jackson had known, who committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. "Though Adam was a friend of mine, he ..." is the vocal motif

Motif (music)

In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....

. Instrumentally, it contains a soft acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

 part interlaced throughout by a viola line. One may guess of its allusions to mankind and Browne's place in this lost mankind.

Picked up by Kiki Dee

Kiki Dee

Kiki Dee is an English singer with a career spanning more than 40 years....

 in 1973 on her Loving & Free album, which made it seem more like a call for unity between menfolk and womenfolk à la Helen Reddy

Helen Reddy

Helen Reddy , often referred to as "The Queen of 70s Pop", is an Australian-American singer and actress. In the 1970s, she enjoyed international success, especially in the United States, where she placed fifteen singles in the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100. Six of those 15 songs made the Top 10...

's coda Until I make my brother understand. Also picked up by Larry Norman

Larry Norman

Larry David Norman was an American Christian musician, singer, songwriter, record label owner, and record producer, who worked with Christian rock music...

, who by doing so, as a very popular Christian contemporary music performer of the early 1970s, left no doubt as to the reference to Adam as being all of mankind going wayward of sorts. There is also a version in Catalan

Catalan language

Catalan is a Romance language, the national and only official language of Andorra and a co-official language in the Spanish autonomous communities of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencian Community, where it is known as Valencian , as well as in the city of Alghero, on the Italian island...

 by the Majorcan singer Maria del Mar Bonet

Maria del Mar Bonet

Maria del Mar Bonet i Verdaguer is a Balearic singer from the island of Majorca.-Early life and career:She studied ceramics in the school of arts, but eventually she decided to dedicate herself to song. She arrived in Barcelona in 1967, where she began to sing with the group Els Setze Jutges...

.