lee hazlewood - "my autumn's done come" (from these boots were made for walkin': the complete mgm recordings lp, available for purchase here.)

oh, but it has: real foliage; horror marathons and glowing pumpkins; meaningful football, whether played friday, saturday, or sunday; my mother's birthday, and my sister's a week after; my breath before me in the evening, a light jacket for the day; pretty girls wearing scarves; a cocoon of blankets and the clock falling back.

lee says it like it's a bad thing, though. oh, i know, it's metaphorical, about getting older and all that, realizing that the girls on the cover of vogue won't give you a second look, that you'll settle for the girls in the sears catalog. sinatra did the september of my years the year before, but he had turned fifty--ol' lee was only thirty-seven at the time of recording this one! now, stuart staples, he was seven years from being born in 1966; he was, though, a twinkle in hazlewood's eye, lee establishing the prototype for the tindersticks, before putting it to bed and moving on to more fertile ground, i.e. nancy. if you want to pity anyone, pity stu: not even out of the womb and already outdone. no wonder he's so sullen.

for all that talk about metaphor and the like, i can't deny the song's v. real power any more than i can stand deny the passage of time. wherever you are, it's about to get whole lot colder.