Phoebe Bridgers’ favourite Nina Simone song: “the most unreal, absurdly great song”
As one of the driving forces of the revived interest in indie folk, Phoebe Bridgers’ taste in music is full of folk legends of the past. From Bob Dylan to Leonard Cohen to Elliott Smith, her roots are firmly in poetic lyricism and soft, subdued guitar-focused instrumentals. It’s no surprise, then, that her favourite Nina Simone song is a classic penned by Cohen.
Countless artists have recorded their own takes on Cohen’s output, but few have done his words justice quite like Simone. In 1969, the jazz singer recorded a soaring cover of Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, which was featured on To Love Somebody. The cover took the track in a completely different direction from Cohen’s sombre original, adding optimistic piano and improvised vocalisations. Simone well and truly made the song her own, so much so that Bridgers views the track as hers.
The indie singer-songwriter named the track as a favourite in an interview with The Line of Best Fit, praising Cohen’s writing and Simone’s performance: “I love this so much because it has two of my favourite things of all time on it, Leonard Cohen’s lyrics and Nina Simone’s voice and interpretation. It’s the most unreal, absurdly great song.”
Though she acknowledges Cohen’s masterful writing, Bridgers admitted that, to her, the song belongs to Simone: “I feel like it’s her song, just like Jeff Buckley’s ‘Hallelujah’, I feel that ‘Suzanne’ is Nina Simone’s. I love Leonard Cohen’s version but Nina Simone brings a whole different thing to it.”
Bridgers recalls hearing Cohen’s track first but later being “blown away” when someone showed her Simone’s version: “It was a little bit frustrating at first, knowing that song so well and then listening to someone doing a totally different thing with the vocals, because I always want to sing alone, but now I feel the opposite, every time I hear an interpretation of the song I want to sing the crazy Nina Simone stuff.”
Rather than continuing to irk her, Bridgers began to admire Simone’s deviation from the original. Her love for the version stems from the seeming improvisation in the track, as she gushes, “It’s how clearly the band is following her off-the-cuff vocals, it’s a beautiful version and that whole record To Love Somebody is amazing.”
The record also included covers of fellow folk icon Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’, and The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’, which Bridgers is equally enthusiastic about. Perhaps controversially, she argued, “That’s unreal, it’s like the ‘Suzanne’ version where it’s, ‘That’s my favourite version now’.”
Simone takes Cohen’s words into entirely new territories, and you want to travel with her. Listen back to Phoebe Bridgers’ favourite Nina Simone song, a cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Suzanne’, below.
