"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)
“We lay long in the immense tide
Of shade and shadowy desire
And saw the dusk assail the wall,
The black surge, mounting, crash the stone!
Companion of this lust, we fall,
I said lest we should die alone.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)