"Blame It on My Youth"

Love, like youth, is wasted on the young...

One of the rare, if not only, studio album covers on which the singer is depicted as actually singing.

These people need to calm down! (pic source)
"Blame It on My Youth" is a jazz standard written by Oscar Levant and Edward Heyman in 1934. Frank Sinatra recorded a version in 1957 on the Close to You album, accompanied by pal Felix Slatkin and his Hollywood String Quartet. Although it's a mellow ballad similar to the things he recorded during his youthful, Columbia days, you can hear the crooner's years (just having turned 41) beginning to catch up with him here, when during the first time he sings "my" (as in blame it on my youth), his voice crackles just a bit due to the years of smoking and late nights. Often while performing on stage or in the recording studio, he would insert little jokes like "I think I swallowed a shot glass" or "Why'd I sleep in the pool?" if his voice faltered.