“I’m as soft as they come”: Why Nancy Sinatra regretted her signature song
While the kids of famous people always catch a lot of slack when they enter into the family business with an arrogant ease, they also all run into one big hurdle of how to possibly make their mark from under the looming shadow of mum or dad, and as far as nepo babies go, Nancy Sinatra was a great one who did manage it.
Some might argue that Sinatra only managed it with the help of her father Frank when the two duetted ‘Something Stupid’, a wildly weird love song for a dad and daughter to be singing, and the song hit number one, however, it was really the other way around.
By 1967, when that song came out, Frank Sinatra was flailing as the world seemed to move on without him. Nancy, in the meantime, was young, beautiful and prepped to crack the hippie world. With the help of Lee Hazelwood writing her songs and a team of stylists on hand to give her the ultimate 1960s makeover, complete with doe-eyed makeup and baby blond hair, all signs pointed towards inevitable stardom.
At first, though, things weren’t sticking, it was all too twee and too boring for the times, and that’s when Hazelwood presented her with a song he was planning to keep for himself, ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’, offering an instant switch-up.
“You can’t sing like Nancy Nice Lady anymore. You have to sing for the truckers,” Hazelwood told her, imploring her to give it some real attitude and lean into the character that this ballsy track required. She did it, and she did it successfully as the track landed at number one, but she forever felt disconnected from it.
“The image created by ‘Boots’ isn’t the real me. ‘Boots’ was hard, and I’m as soft as they come,” she said in 1971. To her, the song that became her signature never felt like her true self, but always required some acting to pull off, even after her team had long since put her in the perfect pair of go-go boots and dressed her to look the part.
Her only relief about the song was that she’d saved it from being released by Hazelwood himself. It wasn’t that she didn’t like his music, as their lengthy collaborative relationship said otherwise; it was simply that, with Sinatra already feeling like the song was harsh from her voice, she thought it would be evil coming from him.
“When a guy sings it, the song sounds harsh and abusive, but it’s perfect for a little girl,” she said, talking Hazelwood out of recording it himself by promising she would give it her all.
It was a hit, a hit so big that the year later, her own dad came knocking, setting up their duet as a way to make himself seem cooler, but while Nancy had managed to carve out her own space, it was never really one that felt much like her at all.
