We might already have stretched our motto “from the eighties to the noughties” by including a song or two that actually hailed from the seventies. So let’s one-up this and go all the way back to 1965.

Or even 1963. That’s the year Frank Sinatra starred in the comedy-western “4 for Texas” and uttered the line “They tell me them boots ain’t built for walking”. Barton Lee Hazelwood, who was tasked by Sinatra to boost his daughter Nancy’s singing career quite liked the line and it inspired him to write These Boots Are Made For Walking. Originally he had planned to sing it himself, but Sinatra was able to convince him that sung by a man it would be perceived as brutish, while coming from a girl it was rather cute. He also made sure Nancy would lose the nice lady image and start singing in lower keys.

The song immediately became an international hit and so an accompanying movie was produced, to be played on Scopitones, jukeboxes capable of playing 16mm films – Music videos in the sense as we know them were not yet invented in the 1960ies. These days the short movie is considered the definition of what the “Swinging Sixties” looked like.

Sinatra and Hazelwood would produce a string of other famous songs, among them “Something Stupid” (a duet with her father) and “Summer Wine“.