Tim Hardin - "Reason to Believe"

Of the 120 seconds, each a gift, that comprise Tim Hardin's original version of "Reason to Believe," the fourteen that fall between the seventeenth and the thirty-second are my favourites. Never have fourteen seconds better exemplified the power of building a song atom by atom, each revealing unheard aspects of the ones that came before, and of the musical molecules they together form. Or, put another way, the revelation contained in those fourteen seconds, the song's careful unfolding, is a masterpiece within a masterpiece.

Of those fourteen seconds, my favourite three are the 18th, in which the drummer's brush first hits the snare, the 25th, in which the horseman's spurs first jangle, and the 27th, in which the bass first sounds deeply. (If only I could marry three separate seconds! But I'm not a polygamist, and anyway, each would always be jealous of the other two.)

"Reason to Believe" was made famous by Rod Stewart's typically hoarse rendition. And yet the perfect simplicity of this arrangement, the fact that the wounded words are the singer's own, and the quality of his teetering vibrato make Hardin's version roughly one thousand times more potent.