singles by simone

Just when I think I have heard and have everything by Nina Simone, I am pleasantly surprised. A Single Woman has some tracks I’ve heard though on this CD they sound different. I noted the orchestration in a few, did a little digging and discovered that each of these single songs were recorded later in her career. That said, I will never stop being enamored with the lushness of Nina, felt touched down deep on my first listen through the entire collection. “I live alone,” are the first three words of the first stanza one hears floating out with a resolution that jabbed my side, stirred my soul. She then starts out on a journey to find herself, find new loves in Lonesome Cities but remembers that it hasn’t all been bad as she delivers in quiet defiance Love’s Been Good to Me. If I Should Lose You, also found on older albums, has a new sadness, worry perhaps about one who she can’t get out of her heart, rolling over the strings and horns. I had to look up what Il N'Y a Pas d'Amour Heureux meant, it mentioned how love can bruise which I interpret as hurt. Just Say I Love Him, the message to that one who slipped through the grasp who still is the one wanted. And then she rocks through The More I See You to tell that him that yes indeed he is the one and the final declaration delivered in a peppy, hopeful swinging short tune…Marry Me!

I just loved how this CD resonated with me. It tells the collective story of so many women I know at this moment in our lives -- single women on new roads with lots of seriously earned knowledge tucked into every crevice of our minds, bodies and souls, hearts open to happily give to only one, maybe from our past or a love to come. Thanks Nina for singing our songs simply, beautifully. Hey single guys…

keep your peepers open!®