Throwback Thursday: Nancy Sinatra, ‘Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)’

Welcome to Throwback Thursday, a weekly series showcasing an album, single, music video or performance of a bygone era and its personal and/or cultural significance.

On the surface, it’s easy to see why so many misinterpret “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down),” which uses western imagery to cut open a tale of mournful romance and abandonment. Sonny Bono wrote the song for her then-wife Cher for her second album, The Sonny Side of Cher, released spring of ’66. While I’ve come to certainly appreciate Cher’s jangly, free-spirited original, Nancy Sinatra‘s rendering is considerably more grim, slipping into the storytelling with a relish, as she seems to lick each note with a sobering smirk.

Ripped off her How Does That Grab You? album, “Bang Bang” is heaved into the ground, and Sinatra’s voice moves at a snail’s pace, intentionally making the listener’s skin crawl as a result. It comes in waves, as the story unravels, and while it could be perceived as a murderous, southern-gothic tale of revenge, it’s simply about heartbreak. Bono crafted a story that begins with two kids, who play cowboys and indians, and as they grow older, they fall for each other and get married. But the honeymoon phase wears off pretty abruptly, and the narrator’s lover runs away off into the sunset for a journey no one will ever know or fully understand. “Now he’s gone I don’t know why / Until this days sometimes I cry / He didn’t even say goodbye / He didn’t take the time to lie,” Sinatra sings, musician Billy Strange’s tremolo guitar quivering with angst and misery in much the same way a ghost haunts its former life.

During the 1966 broadcast of Frank Sinatra’s special A Man And His Music, Part II, later issued to VHS and DVD, Nancy Sinatra gathered her wits and launched into a even-keeled, brittle and truly remarkable performance. Her voice goes down smooth, as you’d come to expect from her by then, and backed only with Strange’s measured but loose guitar playing, “Bang Bang” emerges as the timeless classic it was always meant to become.

Watch below:

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