Which song did Nina Simone play live the most?
Talent alone doesn’t get you far in the music industry. Despite what we’ve been told by a generation of reality show talent competitions, artistry can’t just be manufactured. No, having the ability is entirely one thing, but pairing it with an artistic vision is another. Luckily for Nina Simone, she had both in droves.
In many ways, she was the quintessential vocal artist. Preceding all of the icons who have come before us in modern times, she understood what it meant to pair expression with talent, emotion with precision, and poetry with music.
She could just as easily turn her hand to a love ballad as she could a political protest track, for every single song she performed was an unfiltered opportunity to bare her soul for all to see. Every syllable was uttered with powerful honesty and fierce intent, so when paired with her undeniably beautiful vocals, there was no denying this was an artist in the truest sense.
But while there was a tender underbelly that existed in her artistic profile, she was famously resolute in her outlook. While her approach was genius to most, to her it was relatively simple. She knew clearly, what ingredients needed to be thrown into the mix, to make a truly great song.
“The structure. The cleanliness. The tone. The nuances. The implications. The silences. The dynamics all have to do with sound and music,” she explained. “It’s as close to God as I know. The cleanliness of classical music; not all of it, some of it’s too cold.“
That was the foundation of her greatness and one that has since informed generation after generation of songwriters. From Aretha Franklin and Erykah Badu to Paul McCartney and Nick Cave, she ultimately showed the greats the way.
“The great Nina Simone was a living grievance machine,” Cave explained, outlining her acute ability to tap into the nuance of human emotion. He continued, “Her race, her gender, her misused talents (she wanted to be a classical pianist) – and this rage infused all her work, and is what makes it so multi-layered.“
He added: “Even her most beautiful love songs, which I count as some of the most incandescent works of art ever recorded, were marinated in a sense of resentment and contempt for the workings of the world. It is this exhilarating collision of opposing forces — love and scorn — that makes Nina Simone’s existential and political protestations so compelling.”
To have seen her live then would have been to feel emotion poured out in its most concentrated form. But more importantly, it would have been done through accessibility, through a setlist of songs that are now considered some of the greatest standalone singles of all time.
But which one did she play the most?
The details of just what song Simone played the most over her illustrious career are rather sketchy. There are hundreds of unaccounted-for gigs that exist solely in the memories of their lucky attendees. But many believe her hit ‘Mississippi Goddam’ is likely to be the frontrunner.
However, there was one song that rivalled it, and it wasn’t even hers. George Gershwin’s song ‘I Loves You, Porgy’ is a track that Simone regularly covered, and according to Setlist, the only website that seeks to statistically archive Simone’s performances, this was the most-played song.
She reportedly played it a total of 38 times, whereas ‘Mississippi Goddam’ was only played 34 times.
