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Reason To Believe
Tim Hardin

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Tim Hardin attained a modicum of success in the '60s as a songwriter working out of Greenwich Village. Reason To Believe comes from his debut album, Tim Hardin I, released on the Verve label in 1966 when he was just 25.

Tim Hardin Song facts

Composer
Tim Hardin

Genre
Folk

Album
Tim Hardin I

Year of release
1966
With lyrics like "Knowing that you lied, straight-faced, while I cried", even an upbeat melody cannot mask the song's mournful tone. And while Bobby Darin's positive spin gave us slightly more Reason To Believe, it is Hardin's husky, almost cracking, voice that makes the words sound heartfelt.
Follow-up  album Tim Hardin II came a year after I, before he switched to Columbia for Bird On A Wire and Painted Head. 25 years after his death, Hardin's albums have come to be recognised as classics of the folk/rock genre.
Though he played Woodstock in 1969, Tim Hardin sadly never reached the heights he could have as a performer. A heroin addiction picked up in Vietnam and crippling stage fright led to increasingly erratic live performances. It was left to other artists to win acclaim on the back of Hardin's tracks. Bobby Darin took If I Were A Carpenter into the top ten in 1966 and Rod Stewart, Joan Baez and Paul Weller have all recognised the quality of his writing.
Eventually, drugs and health problems caused Tim to stop writing and recording altogether. After a brief period of recovery in England, he returned to LA in 1975 where he lived as a recluse until his death from an overdose in 1980 aged just 39.
Other versions

Listen to Bobby Darin version

Listen   Bobby Darin covered a number of Hardin's songs and Reason To Believe made #6 in 1966. Listen to it here and compare to the original.

His music to me sounds like the struggle of a man trying desperately to ignore his demons.

Penny, Warwick
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