http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYJYcVzXm2Q
There’s too much to say. I’m gonna have to bullet point this:
-This is Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman.” It is the greatest song ever recorded.
-I know, I know – “Aren’t you the relativist around here?” Let me rephrase then: I think Nina Simone’s “Sinnerman” is the greatest song ever recorded.
-I think we’re all familiar with the artists who record what seem like long songs. I remember one of the true tricks of junior high school dances was making sure that I was dancing with the girl of my dreams during either The Eagles “Hotel California” or Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” That meant between six and eight minutes of touching a living, human girl. Times were easier then. What was I saying again? Oh right, long songs. So those were long songs. This clocks in at over ten minutes. And I’d dare say that not a single second is wasted.
-Being that I’m the father of two children, it is rare that me and my headphones can spend ten uninterrupted minutes together. If my attention is not being immediately sought, then I’m wondering what the little bastards are up to. I’ve thus perfected listening to music with one headphone on and one off. I’ve somehow learned to enjoy a single audio channel. Never have children. This song though? It commands both headphones. If those ten minutes are the ones that my daughter decides to put my son into the dryer, so be it. I did my best with those two anyway.
-It commands two headphones because the song is so immersive.* There’s so much to enjoy. The thumping bassline? Those little guitar spots? The drummer’s work on the high-hat? The manic piano? The handclaps?
-And that’s before you consider Nina Simone’s attempt to separate space and time with her voice? Her desperation is audible, as is what sounds like genuine strain in her voice. This isn’t a singer going through the numbers; this a singer giving a song everything she’s got. For ten minutes. Ten minutes!
-It’s a shame that this song is most often recognized from its placement in the films like The Thomas Crown Affair and from a truly horrifying remix by Felix Da Housecat, which I assumed he turned only after saying, “Here, I completely ruined this for you.” Timbaland‘s used it too, badly. The less said about this, the better. Nina Simone owns this song in a way that I can’t imagine anybody else doing.
-I’m bad with lyrics. The ones I can remember I can barely understanding. That acknowledged, this song is about a profoundly screwed human being, a person with nowhere to turn, begging the Lord for forgiveness that the Lord seems disinterested in giving, right? I think I just nailed it.
*I’m doing my best not sound like a Pitchfork Douchebag. Whether or not I’m successful is entirely up to you.
Definitely one of my favorites. I think “Feeling Good” is as good, though.Report
Love, love, love this song. And Nina Simone. Horrifying remix or not, I first heard it on the soundtrack of The Thomas Crown Affair and felt compelled to seek out the artist and buy up some of her CDs. It is as amazing a song as you say it is.Report
Oddly, because he posted this song, I’m going to have “Young, Gifted, and Black” stuck in my head all day. She was amazing. It’s a shame that we live in a country that, in essence, didn’t want her.
Also, have you heard about the controversy surrounding the Nina Simone movie?Report
No. I didn’t even know there was a Nina Simone movie.Report
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/20/zoe-saldana-nina-simone-biopic-casting-controversy_n_2165356.htmlReport
The remix was featured in Miami Vice. My point about mentioning The Thomas Crown Affair is that I’d be willing to wager that, for a lot of people, that’s where they recognize the song from. “Oh, it’s that song from that movie…” sort of thing.
To be honest though, that’s indirectly how I first encountered the song as a teenager; a friend had seen the movie and wanted to know what he’d heard, then came to me and said in an evangelical sort of way, “You have to hear this.”Report
This is another of my favorites from Nina, Four Women.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCwME6Jpn3sReport
I’ve always wondered—what was the deal with her accent? She was American, wasn’t she?Report
“-It commands two headphones because the song is so immersive.* There’s so much to enjoy. The thumping bassline? Those little guitar spots? The drummer’s work on the high-hat? The manic piano? The handclaps? ”
That is a fantastic recording. I was also on a huge Big Star kick the other day, and those records *also* sound so much better than most of today’s. Don’t know how much you’ve read about “the loudness wars”/compression and how they have wrecked so many recordings, but this song is definitely evidence that we used to know how to do it right (we need quiet and space and “air” in our records too).
When she gets close to the 1 min. mark (“I said, Rock, what’s the matter….”) her phrasing is to me very, very similar to Bob Marley and reggae. I looked at their respective timelines and she would have been pretty popular just as Marley was starting out, so while it could just be a case of them both reaching back to traditional African call-and-response type vocals, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to find out that Bob was trying to sing like Nina; if so, she returned the favor when she later covered “No Woman, No Cry” and “Get Up, Stand Up”.
And while I am not going to try to defend that particular Felix track (though it’s not bad for what it is IMO), Felix in general can be decent – in particular, Kittenz & Thee Glitz got lumped in with that “electroclash” nonsense, but it is a rare dance LP that works as an actual album for listening, an 80’s electro throwback full of delirious arpeggiators and silly/serious single-finger synth playing. And his parody of The Purple One in “We All Wanna Be Prince” (so true, so true) just cracks me up.
Does that make me a Pitchfork d-bag? 😉Report
I’ve got no problem with people like Felix generally; but his treatment of this particular song was nightmarish. And your enthusiasm for work he’s done isn’t anywhere near the level of Pitchfork nonsense that is so unappetizing.Report
Here is a great interview of Nina from ’69. She talks a bit about her upbringing by her minister mother, and the origin of her musical sensibility in the revivalist/Gospel movement that her mother was part of. That’s what you’re hearing in her phrasing in “Sinnerman,” and much of her other music. I’m sure that tradition goes back to African music, but it’s also got American folk roots as well (listen to The Weavers do it in ’63, for an example of a version that’s similar to Simone’s).
Interestingly, the song was also popular in reggae. For example, The Wailers (with Tosh) in ‘64, Peter Tosh with the Wailers doing Downpressor Man, Peter Tosh again. The two versions of “Downpressor Man” are my favorite versions of the song after Simone’s. Both versions with Tosh feel more like protest songs (not surprisingly, given the change to the title and lyrics), whereas Simone’s feels deeply personal, almost as though it’s addressed to a demon within her, complete with a descent into madness.Report
Ugh, I screwed up the link there, obviously.
Just in case, here is the link to the Ebony Magazine interview:
http://books.google.com/books?id=AtsDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA156&dq=nina+simone&hl=en&ei=IA1HTfjNCsXXgQe4ipGQAg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CC8Q6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=nina%20simone&f=false
And The Weavers version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXA2cjPnPJ4Report
Nina’s Save Me is hot and groovy too – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMI2LRujUXMReport
Sinnerman is indeed an awesome song.Report
I’d say a lot of people know of “Sinnerman” through it’s use in Alvin Ailey’s “Revelations”, his most famous piece of choreography, and he is one of the best and best known choreographers and hsi troupe is the best, and the troupe still performs Revelations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revelations_(Alvin_Ailey)
I like the overdone version on the Alvin Ailey Revelations CD better than the Simone version, but hers is clearly more subtle. There is a poor version (sung live by a man, and the Revelations Cd is sung by a woman and is much better) here.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=I-OuqB1pgys&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DI-OuqB1pgys
If you ever have a chance to see Alvin Ailey, doing Revelations or anything else, do it.Report
Sinnerman is the only song I can recall having been featured in more than one movie or TV episode (though I’m sure there are others). Having heard and liked it quite a lot in The Thomas Crown Affair remake, I later heard it in the excellent BBC series Sherlock, and finally just bought the compilation of her songs. Good music, indeed.Report
Thank you so much for posting this. I have neither watched The Thomas Crown Affair, nor have I heard any of the remixes – if they are that bad, it makes me even more glad I pay little attention to modern/pop music. This is very powerful, and I confess that I haven’t listened much to Nina Simone either, but as a result, Pastel Blues is soon to be on my to-buy list!
Thank you again.Report
Here’s another classic video http://smarturl.it/NinaSimoneToBeFreeReport