Boldly stepping out from the legacy of her surname, Boots is filled with magic moments and unbelievable charisma.
By the mid-1960s, Nancy Sinatra had struggled to gain traction with conventional pop recordings. Her voice was always fantastic and so characterful. She also had an unbelievable image and magnetism, but her breakthrough with Boots really was an alignment of those elements cohering into a clear identity. Her newfound artistic partnership with Lee Hazlewood was also nothing short of alchemy. The production is loose whilst focused and it’s a fantastic selection of songs. You have to really have something special going on to cover contemporaries like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and still find your own space in the songs.
“Dumb stuff, as Lee used to call it. Dumb doesn’t mean stupid. It means human and understandable. It was the sound of three guitars, drums, and bass. It was simple, very, very simple. I can still see the room, the studio. With Carol Kaye, Glen Campbell, Donnie Owens… I can still see them all sitting there and chunking away. I guess simple was the best way to explain it, uncomplicated.”
– Nancy Sinatra.
As an album, Boots sounds absolutely amazing. Billy Strange’s innovative arrangements give the album gorgeous swells and rousing pop drive. The players are just unbelievable, with the famed Los Angeles session musicians The Wrecking Crew, including Carol Kaye, Glen Campbell and Donnie Owens, tearing through jangling pop hooks, but it is also an album with a stripped-back aesthetic and a lot of restraint. Both the originals and the covers leave so much space for Sinatra’s controlled, almost conversational delivery. The title track, in particular, eclipsed the album to become a broader cultural reference point, but the LP as a whole remains a key example of how songwriting, production, and image converged in mid-1960s American pop.
Very few people capture sultriness the way Nancy Sinatra does. Similarly, few people capture swagger and fun the way Nancy Sinatra does, but it is that she can move between those modes on the same record with such grace that makes her and this wonderful album so iconic.
