Best nina simone album ever update#
Best nina simone album ever professional#

In one interview with the American magazine DetailsВ in 1997, Simone, when asked about the recent release of a compilation of her recordings from the 1960s, claimed that she had no knowledge of the release, or of the revived interest in her discography in America at the time. After her version of 'My Baby Just Cares For Me' became a huge hit, Simone claimed that signing the contract without reading it led to her lose a fortune. However, in a typically cynical incident for the music industry at the time, Simone, who had no manager or agent, was convinced to sign away the rights to the album to Nathan for $3,000, as the Guardian reported. The album, Little Girl Blue, was released in 1959 and attracted many more bookings for Simone in large New York venues. Simone believed that she was able to get her own way with Nathan because she truly was not interested in becoming a famous singer - she still considered popular music a distraction from her classical ambitions. Unusually for singers at the time, Simone insisted that she select the entirety of the music on the record, as opposed to the selection of songs that Nathan had chosen for her and brought to their first meeting, per Glide.

Best nina simone album ever professional#

As NPR's Michel MartinВ describes it: 'Nina Simone was a gifted and prolific singer, songwriter and pianist who became a powerful presence in the civil rights movement and paid a professional price for it.'Д«ut how did the woman who was born with the name Eunice Kathleen Waymon in poor circumstances in Tryon, North Carolina - and who, despite everything else, was enraptured with the dream of becoming above all else a classical concert pianist - come to be one of the defining artists and civil rights activists of the 20th century? The answer is not just Nine Simone's natural talent and the uncompromising attitude that she identified in herself in her final years, but also her innate strength and courage throughout a tumultuous and tragic personal life, the story of which - like her music - is utterly captivating.Дuring this time, Simone was approached by the owner of Bethlehem Records in New York, Syd Nathan, to record an album. For anyone looking back at Nina Simone in the 21st century, it is obvious that she was always more than a brilliant singer. The quote is notable in suggesting the depth with which one must approach the figure of Simone in retrospect it was also, as we now know, prophetic.

So said Nina Simone in an interviewВ with Details magazine, reflecting on her career before her death in 2003 at the age of 70. The classics are still the classics, but the canon keeps getting bigger and better.'I want to be remembered as a diva from beginning to end who never compromised in what she felt about racism and how the world should be, and who to the end of her days consistently stayed the same.' But that was part of what made rebooting the RS 500 fascinating and fun 86 of the albums on the list are from this century, and 154 are new additions that werenвЂ™t on the 2003 or 2012 versions. Of course, it could still be argued that embarking on a project like this is increasingly difficult in an era of streaming and fragmented taste. (As in 2003, we allowed votes for compilations and greatest-hits albums, mainly because a well-made compilation can be just as coherent and significant as an LP, because compilations helped shaped music history, and because many hugely important artists recorded their best work before the album had arrived as a prominent format.) When we first did the RS 500 in 2003, people were talking about the вЂњdeath of the album.вЂќ The album -and especially the album release - is more relevant than ever. The electorate includes BeyoncГ©, Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish rising artists like H.E.R., Tierra Whack, and Lindsey Jordan of Snail Mail as well as veteran musicians, such as Adam Clayton and the Edge of U2, Raekwon of the Wu-Tang Clan, Gene Simmons, and Stevie Nicks. To do so, we received and tabulated Top 50 Albums lists from more than 300 artists, producers, critics, and music-industry figures (from radio programmers to label heads, like Atlantic Records CEO Craig Kallman). So we decided to remake our greatest albums list from scratch.

But no list is definitive - tastes change, new genres emerge, the history of music keeps being rewritten. Over the years, itвЂ™s been the most widely read - and argued over - feature in the history of the magazine (last year, the RS 500 got over 63 million views on the site).

Best nina simone album ever update#

Rolling StoneвЂ™s list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time was originally published in 2003, with a slight update in 2012.