Hazy shade of winter
I’m kind of back from an unscheduled
break in blogging. At least I think I might be. I picked this song, because it’s
cold outside, and because it’s been like that for a while. I figured I had to
post it soon, because it would pretty silly to not post it, and then have the
weather warm up. I’d have to post something else instead.
Paul Simon wrote Hazy shade of
winter sometime around 1966. It was a single, and then later included on the Simon
and Garfunkel album Bookends in 1968. It did fairly well on the charts, 13 in
the US, 30 in the UK.
The Bangles covered it in 1987 for
the soundtrack to the movie Less than zero. It placed higher than the original on
both charts. 2 in the US and 11 in the UK.
Simon and Garfunkel:
The Bangles:
Okay. So I had nearly written off the
Bangles version in the first couple of seconds, but then all of a sudden a
guitar just jumps out of nowhere. It made me actually stop and consider that
maybe I had spoken too quickly. But now the song is over, and it really just
wasn’t enough. Simon and Garfunkel’s version is basically flawless. The
arrangement is so good, and the vocal is, well come on, it’s Simon and
Garfunkel. It’s really tight. The Bangles version has some cheesy production
that’s gone of style, and even though their version is actually not bad, it’s
just all the little things that are problematic, like the opening, that just end up
taking too much away from it, and as a result, it’s noticeably worse.
