Paul's heart belongs to Nancy Sinatra

By Paul Tsikitas
Collegian Editor
April 12, 2006

Every time we pop on our favorite record that we like to listen to in total isolation, there is a certain feeling that comes with it. Whether you want to admit it or not, your musical guilty pleasure is mostly pleasure and very little guilt. People who love something that others might shake their heads at is part of the pleasure. For me, one guilty pleasure I don’t divulge to just about anyone is my love for a young starlet of days past. I don’t keep it a secret because I’m ashamed, but because my relationship with her is special to me.

That starlet is none other than the beautiful and talented Nancy Sinatra.

What makes Nancy so attractive isn’t just her young beauty on the cover of my two vinyl LPs, but her sweet renditions of some of the best songs ever written. Her talent isn’t in songwriting by any stretch. I’m pretty sure, much like her old man, she couldn’t write a song lyric if they paid her enough money. That’s not where the draw is.

When I was a kid, I remember hearing “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’” and thinking it was a ridiculously silly song. It’s dripping with coy sexiness that is lost in the current stream of pop music where it’s flat out raunchy. It took a certain Quentin Tarantino to make my love for Nancy Sinatra explode. In the opening credits of Kill Bill Vol. 1, there is a hauntingly beautiful song entitled “Bang, Bang” that has now entered the lexicon of famous opening credit songs. With the infectious surf guitar back-drop and poetic singing/reading of the Sonny Bono lyrics, it instantly became a song that I knew I would love forever. Later, when I found a copy of her album Boots, I was pleased to hear her covers of Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones songs that were as far from the originals as you could get, like “As Tears Go By” and “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

I’m not really guilty for loving Nancy Sinatra, but I guarantee many people will read this and think, “What’s wrong with this guy?” The answer is simple: nothing. Nancy makes any American Idol tool look foolish. She can at least bring a style to old songs that is so different from the original that the listener can’t help but fall in love. With an idyllic, soft voice, sexy independent persona and her lasting power over four decades, Nancy Sinatra is an indulgent pleasure that this music snob is ready to scream from the rooftops. How does that grab you?

tsikitp1@lasalle.edu