These Boots Are Made for Walkin' – Nancy Sinatra

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 These Boots Are Made for Walkin' – Nancy Sinatra

You ready?
Love the sliding guitar on the intro to this song, it’s like your heart pounding, you know it's all about to go South. The whole tone and the message are so well matched, you know she means what’s she saying. It’s such a clever, simple way of spinning the ‘leaving’ song idea, mistreat me and you'll get it. When this was a big hit for Nancy Sinatra back in the sixties I expect this was quite racy for it’s time. The words are so well crafted, keep plugging the same message, with some fantastic visual references. The backing is also so dramatic, you get the urgency of the situation. You better start behaving yourself or I’m off. Really like the use of the horns in this, it’s one of those really sparse sounding songs, but when you break it down there’s lots going on in there.

It takes some doing but this song is so sexy sounding at the same time as actually saying I'm in control here. In fact it was written by a guy, Lee Hazlewood, apparently he wanted to record it himself. Nancy talked him out of it saying coming from a man the words sounded quite abusing and threatening. With the success of the song I expect they were both glad that Nancy was proved right.

Quite a few artists have covered this, even Billy Ray Cyrus of Achy Breaky Heart fame had a go on it. But my second favourite version is by Jessica Simpson, she did it for the Dukes of Hazard movie sound track.

Favourite lyric : And you keep thinking that you'll never get burnt (HAH) / Well, I've just found me a brand new box of matches (YEAH) 

Location: Rayleigh, UK

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