This week I look at “The Perfect Song” and indulge in some abstruse navel-gazing. Do I choose the music, or has the music formed me? My personal existentiality as reflected a 2-minute paragon of restraint.

Tim Hardin has perhaps the finest career I know of based on the fewest accomplishments. Two significant LPs in his mid-20s, a drug-ruined mess by 30, dead at 39, far fewer than a dozen great songs. But he managed to do more in two minutes than many others did in decades of writing and recording. Each song is a paragon of honesty and restraint – beautiful and precious, but without a millitrace of the maudlin. I guess it was hard to be so honest.