‘I Shall Be Released’: the greatest cover of Nina Simone’s career
It would typically be assumed that an artist’s own recording of their song would be the ultimate version. Surely, they should have the ultimate say in the song, the ultimate and epitomising performance. It would usually be expected that the person who wrote the song would do the most poignant and moving rendition because no one else could understand the emotional origin of the track as they could. But in the case of Bob Dylan, Nina Simone and ‘I Shall Be Released’, it’s not the same.
From the very start, ‘I Shall Be Released’ was an odd addition to Dylan’s discography. On one hand, the lyrics feel incredibly religious, but when written and recorded in the late 1960s, Dylan had yet to enter his spiritual period. They also feel poignantly political, dealing with legal and social injustice as a rallying cry for a better future, but by 1967, he’d long since fallen out with protest music.
Perhaps that’s why it never found a solid home. Solely released in The Bootleg Series, it was a song he played often at live shows but never recorded properly for any album. It seemed to be a song he didn’t quite know what to do with, causing it to take on a strange position as a song that, realistically, has always been better sung by someone else.
First, The Band did their version for their debut album, Music from Big Pink. There have also been powerful covers from Jeff Buckley, Joan Baez, and Ricky Nelson, and even the Beatles jammed the song during the Get Back sessions. However, none of them can hold a candle to Nina Simone’s rendition, not even a single recording or live performance from Dylan himself.
It’s simply so in line with Simone, her music and her legacy. Perhaps there’s a level to which this track, deeply inspired by gospel music, couldn’t adequately be pulled off by a white man like Dylan. Not only do Simone’s vocals seem to give the song the life it always deserved and the kind of energy Dylan clearly wanted from the track from the beginning, but within her career of powerful protest songs, the song is so well suited to Simone that it feels like her own.
“I see my light come shinin’ / From the west down to the east / Any day now, any day now / I shall be released,” the song goes. Simple yet powerful, visually rich and emotionally charged, storytelling yet universal and fueled by a bold message of looking towards a better, fairer world where a person is free from literal, social or political trappings – all of those descriptions match all of Simone’s best work. Similar to the power behind songs such as ‘Backlash Blues’, ‘To Be Young, Gifted and Black’ or any number of Simone’s protest songs, ‘I Shall Be Released’ fits so perfectly into her repertoire that it’s almost as if Dylan should’ve just handed it over.
In fact, maybe he should’ve handed over all his own protest songs. There is something in Simone’s voice, an undeniable power that gets right at people’s souls that can always carry it. Even her rendition of ‘The Times They Are A-Changin’’ seems able to take a folk song and turn it into a cry for action and change. Her voice seems to make the words clearer, making the message in the song vivid and unignorable.
So, while Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ is a nice enough song with a great message, Simone’s take is powerful, strong, and heavy as her voice seemed able to give it the power it deserved.
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