Songoftheday 10/12/15 - Time time time see what's become of me, while I looked around for my possibilities...

"Hazy Shade Of Winter" - Bangles
from the album Less Than Zero (Original Soundtrack) (1987)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #2 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 14

Today's song of the day comes from the all-woman pop/rock band Bangles, whose second full-length album Different Light was one of the musical high-points of the mid-80s, scoring a quartet of top-40 pop hits with "Manic Monday", "If She Knew What She Wants", "Walking Down Your Street", and the #1 "Walk Like An Egyptian". In the break between albums the group contributed a song to the soundtrack to the film adaptation of the Bret Easton Ellis novel Less Than Zero, starring Robert Downey Jr and Andrew McCarthy. The track was a remake of a classic baroque-pop single from Simon and Garfunkel, "A Hazy Shade Of Winter". The original, which appeared on their 1968 album Bookends but put out as a single two years before, went to #13 in the US and #30 in England...

While the Bangles' version replaced the dainty and spacey air of the original with a more biting electric guitar edge and sneering lead vocals over the flawless four-part harmonies, the unmistakable guitar hook that anchored the song is left quite intact (if not augmented). The video featured the band amongst clips from the movie, which gives the feeling the "winter" part is more about the pharmaceutical "snow" than the real kind...

"Hazy Shade Of Winter" (minus the "A") became the Bangles' third top-10 pop hit in February of 1988. The single also popped in at #41 on Billboard's Mainstream Rock radio chart. Internationally, their cover went to #3 in Canada, top-10 in Australia and Ireland, and #11 in the UK.

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Here's the Bangles live in 1988 (I believe from Saturday Night Live...

...and in 2000 from their VH1 Behind The Music gig...

...and finally, from the same year at a show in Hollywood...

Up tomorrow: Australian rockers get a little nuts.