"A Hazy Shade of Winter" is a song written by Paul Simon, recorded and released by Simon & Garfunkel in 1966, and then included on their 1968 album, Bookends (although it also appeared on their Live from New York City, 1967). It peaked at #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 making it the second highest-charting song on the album after "Mrs. Robinson", which reached #1 when it was released on the back of its inclusion on the soundtrack of The Graduate.
Critic Richie Unterberer described the song as "one of best songs, and certainly one of the toughest and more rock-oriented".
The lyrics evoke the passage of the seasons, but (as the title suggests) focusing on the gloominess of winter. The chorus of the song repeats:
- But look around,
leaves are brown now
And the sky
is a hazy shade of winter
Look around,
leaves are brown
There's a patch of snow on the ground.
They reflect perhaps subconsciously those of John Phillips' "California Dreamin'".
Read more about A Hazy Shade Of Winter: Simon and Garfunkel Chart Performance, The Bangles Version, Charts, Other Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words hazy, shade and/or winter:
“The first moments of sleep are an image of death; a hazy torpor grips our thoughts and it becomes impossible for us to determine the exact instant when the “I,” under another form, continues the task of existence.”
—Gérard De Nerval (1808–1855)
“As the shade went up
And the ambulance came crashing through the dust
Of the new day, the moon and the sun and the stars,
And the iceberg slowly sank
In the volcano and the sea ran far away
Yellow over the hot sand, green as the green trees.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“One of the ministers of Truro, when I asked what the fishermen did in the winter, answered that they did nothing but go a- visiting, sit about, and tell stories, though they worked hard in summer. Yet it is not a long vacation they get. I am sorry that I have not been there in winter to hear their yarns.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)