A lot of artists have covered "Reason To Believe," the folk ballad written in 1965 by the late singer-songwriter Tim Hardin, including Marianne Faithful, Neil Young and Rickie Lee Jones. But few have breathed as much heartache and longing into the song as Sweden's Alice Boman does in her latest video.
Shot in a large, empty hall at Hotel Blume in Baden, Switzerland, the video is as spare and remote as Boman's arrangement. "Knowing that you lied straight-faced while I cried," she sings, with only her piano and incidental sounds to accompany her. Faraway dishes clank, a floor creaks, a door bangs shut. "Still I look to find a reason to believe."
While Hardin's original version of "Reason To Believe" has an almost breezy swing to it, Boman slows it way down and finds its most broken pieces. "I love this song," she tells us via email. "The melody. And the directness of it. It's one of those lyrics that just hit you, and you cannot not listen." Boman says her version was inspired by singer Karen Dalton's cover. It's "so strong and beautiful."
Boman has released two EPs, Skisser and EP II.
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