‘I’ll Be Seeing You’: the song Cat Power feels deeply connected to
Since the early 1990s, having straddled punk influences with her unique brand of folk and swirling blues, Georgia’s Cat Power has been conjuring her distinct brand of “triumphant” indie rock charged with stirring melancholy, which has paved the way for the likes of Lana Del Rey’s pop introspection. Moving away from lo-fi as the 21st century arrived, a fuller and sonically sophisticated canvas has seen Cat Power’s songwriting explore a wider array of artistic terrain since her days opening for Liz Phair.
Power has always worn her influences on her sleeve. Routinely peppering her live sets with unique song covers of her heroes and the occasional multi-hit medley, her loving interpretations have become equally praised as her original material. Over the years, she’s dropped an acclaimed series of cover albums, such as 2000’s The Covers Record, 2008’s Jukebox, and recently 2022’s Covers, all warmly received by critics and fans alike.
Among Covers‘ takes across Frank Ocean, The Pogues, Iggy Pop and Nick Cave, it’s the old Broadway song ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ which Cat Power professes such an affinity for, bordering on envisioning her own authorship when listening to its definitive version.
“When I heard Billie Holiday sing, I could feel her,” she told Vulture shortly after its release. “It wasn’t necessarily thinking I wrote her song, but it was the first time I didn’t feel alone, because I heard somebody who also felt so desperately alone.”
Written by Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal about yearning for a distant love, ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ was published in 1938 and featured in the musical Right This Way. Closing after just 15 shows, its inclusion as the score of the namesake 1944 feature brought the number to a wider audience.
Unable to buy the pop records of her youth, an exposure to her parents’ album collection exposed Cat Power to one other powerhouse performer that nearly left as much of an indelible mark as Holiday’s aching body of work.
“I think I was 13,” she recalled, “I heard that someone else felt truly lonely. There are two pivotal songs for me. First was the live version of Aretha Franklin from 1964 on PBS singing ‘Amazing Grace’; I was 12 (in 1984), and that was the first time that I had music change me. I don’t know how to describe it—something changed in me when I saw that performance, that I hadn’t experienced in music before.”
Franklin touches Cat Power’s universal radar for shared pain and isolation, and Holiday’s moving cover of ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’ brings her to an authentic over, fuelled by the early emotional impressions that have stayed with her all these years. It’s Holiday’s work that guided the young musician towards the well of the human condition and down a path of personal songwriting.
“I felt like she was a homing device,” Cat Power confessed, “Like, if she was the grand alien wizard, I felt like I had found an answer to a riddle. She possessed some sort of supernatural device that I learned, some strength that I don’t know how to describe.”
