Nina Simone’s I Put A Spell On You: Where Beauty Meets Defiance

I Put A Spell On You – Nina Simone

A Waxx Lyrical Deep Dive

A Year of Fire and Fury

1965 was a year of movement—marches, riots, reckonings. The civil rights movement was in full swing, but so were the forces trying to crush it.

In March, the world watched in horror as peaceful protestors were attacked by police and Klansmen on Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. That same year, Malcolm X was assassinated. The Watts Riots exploded in Los Angeles. Martin Luther King Jr., fresh off his Nobel Peace Prize win, was now dodging bricks in Chicago.

The Voting Rights Act was signed into law. Progress, yes—but hard-fought, and incomplete. The country was shifting, and the cracks were showing.

This was also the year Nina Simone released I Put A Spell On You. Alongside Pastel Blues, it marked a turning point—not just in her career, but in the way Black artists used their voices. You can hear it all over this record: elegance colliding with anger, restraint holding back rage. A woman both enchanted and enraged by her country.

Nina Simone: Between Two Worlds

By the time I Put A Spell On You landed in 1965, Nina Simone had already outgrown most of the boxes the world tried to place her in.

Born Eunice Waymon in North Carolina, she trained as a classical pianist with dreams of playing Bach at Carnegie Hall. When that dream was denied—most say due to racial discrimination—she pivoted, taking nightclub gigs under the name Nina Simone to shield her church-going mother from scandal.

Her voice—dark, precise, devastating—soon became impossible to ignore. And while early fame found her on the jazz and pop charts, Simone was never built for mainstream comfort. She was too sharp. Too smart. Too aware.

Nina Simone I Put A Spell On You

By 1964, she had signed to Philips and begun the most politically charged chapter of her career. Her live version of 'Mississippi Goddam' had already lit a match. But I Put A Spell On You was different. It wasn’t a protest record exactly. It was a pivot. A spell cast in public. A reclamation of her image. The start of something bigger.

Nina was walking the tightrope—between star and activist, elegance and fury, control and collapse. And nowhere is that tension clearer than here.

The Album: Dignity, Drama, and a Growing Divide

I Put a Spell On You wasn’t a protest record—at least not in the way Mississippi Goddam or Four Women were. Released in June 1965, it was Simone’s ninth studio album and her second for Philips Records. It’s polished. Orchestrated. At times even cinematic. But beneath that silk, there is fire.

Produced by Hal Mooney (known for his lush work with Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington), the album was recorded in New York, though the exact dates remain unconfirmed. What we do know is that Simone was at a creative and emotional crossroads. She had more control than ever before—Philips gave her space to shape her message—but she was also feeling the weight of expectation.

This is an album full of contradictions. The orchestration is grand, almost theatrical—but Simone’s delivery is often cold-eyed, clinical. Songs like ‘Marriage Is for Old Folks’ and ‘You’ve Got to Learn’ drip with irony, even as the strings swell around them. The title track, a Screamin’ Jay Hawkins cover, is transformed from campy voodoo blues into something regal, restrained, and quietly terrifying.

There’s a precision to the record that borders on detachment. But that’s where the power lies. Nina wasn’t begging to be understood—she was demanding to be heard.

While Pastel Blues, released just four months later, would lean harder into raw emotion and spiritual urgency, I Put A Spell On You showed the other side of Simone’s defiance: elegance as resistance.

It peaked at No. 99 on the Billboard 200 and No. 18 in the UK—respectable, but hardly explosive. The response was lukewarm, even confused. But that’s often the case when someone gets ahead of their time.

Track by Track

I Put A Spell On You

Originally a voodoo-laced blues wail by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, Simone strips it of theatrics and rebuilds it as something slow, serious, and simmering. No shrieking. No wild-eyed possession. Just control. Regal and quietly terrifying, it’s a portrait of obsession not as chaos, but as certainty.

For fans of: Billie Holiday, Portishead, Lana Del Rey

Fun fact: Nina once said she wasn’t really fond of the original, but saw potential in turning it into “something grown.”

Tomorrow Is My Turn

Originally recorded by Charles Aznavour and translated into English, this one feels like an anthem of self-possession. The orchestration is sweeping, almost cinematic—but Simone keeps her delivery grounded, understated, refusing to be swept away.

For fans of: Dusty Springfield, Shirley Bassey, St. Vincent

Fun fact: The album version cuts the final verse from the French original, which referenced religious devotion—Simone wasn’t interested.

Ne Me Quitte Pas

Sung in French, and absolutely devastating. Simone plays Brel’s classic not as desperation but as lament—controlled, aching, fatalistic. The piano is gentle, the strings restrained, and her voice cuts with every word.

For fans of: Jacques Brel, Anohni, Weyes Blood

Fun fact: Simone insisted on singing it in French, believing the original language carried a weight no translation could replicate.

Marriage Is for Old Folks

A playful, sarcastic middle finger to traditional expectations. It’s light on the surface—jazzy, bright—but Simone’s delivery is dry and dangerous. She’s having fun, but she’s also taking aim.

For fans of: Blossom Dearie, Amy Winehouse, Peggy Lee

Fun fact: The song was originally from the Broadway musical The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Nina turned it into a critique.

July Tree

A quiet moment of almost naïve beauty. Simone sounds childlike, tender. The lyrics are impressionistic—nature, memory, love—but there’s a tension beneath the innocence.

For fans of: Vashti Bunyan, Joanna Newsom, Laura Marling

Fun fact: Written by Lincoln Chase, a Brill Building songwriter better known for Little Eva’s ‘The Loco-Motion.’

Gimme Some

A flirtatious, rolling groove that feels like a wink across the room. Simone leans into the blues with playful command—never begging, just offering a chance to keep up. There’s a looseness here, a rare slink in the way she moves through the rhythm.

For fans of: Etta James, Norah Jones, Valerie June

Fun fact: The call-and-response format hints at Simone’s gospel roots, though she frames it here as bedroom gospel.

Feeling Good

Arguably the most iconic track on the record—and maybe of Simone’s entire catalogue. Originally written for a stage musical, Nina takes it and makes it biblical.

For fans of: Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Moses Sumney

Fun fact: Simone’s version wasn’t a single at the time, but it became a global anthem decades later, sampled by Kanye and covered by everyone from Muse to Lauryn Hill.

One September Day

A gentle, introspective ballad. Nina’s piano is delicate here, and the vocal delivery is soft enough to feel like a lullaby—but it carries the ache of something lost.

For fans of: Nick Drake, Lianne La Havas, Feist

Fun fact: Written by her then-husband and manager Andrew Stroud, who also arranged much of her early repertoire—though their personal relationship was deeply troubled.

Blues on Purpose

An instrumental interlude. No vocals—just Nina stretching out at the piano, sharp and soulful. It’s a needed breath, a chance for her to let the keys do the talking.

For fans of: Ahmad Jamal, McCoy Tyner, Alice Coltrane

Fun fact: The melody is loosely based on motifs she’d improvise live during longer political sets—this is one of the few studio examples.

Beautiful Land

From The Roar of the Greasepaint again, but delivered here with cool detachment. She sings about the beauty of a land that may or may not exist—ironic, maybe, considering the America she was living in.

For fans of: Nina Nastasia, Angel Olsen, Scott Walker

Fun fact: The original is jaunty and upbeat. Simone slows it down and turns it into something far more haunted.

You’ve Got to Learn

A sermon disguised as a ballad. The kind of song that sounds sweet until you really listen. “You’ve got to learn / To leave the table / When love’s no longer being served.”

For fans of: Roberta Flack, Laura Mvula, Solange

Fun fact: Simone frequently quoted this line in interviews—she saw it as life advice, not just a lyric.

Take Care of Business

The closer. No fireworks—just calm, commanding resolve. She’s done asking. She’s handling things. It’s the sound of someone clearing the room with grace.

For fans of: Bettye LaVette, Nina Chanel, Sharon Jones

Fun fact: It was rare for Simone to end an album on such a low-key note—but it feels deliberate. Like the beginning of a shift she hadn’t quite named yet.

Why It Still Resonates

There’s something uncanny about this record. It doesn’t beg for your tears. It doesn’t shout its politics. It doesn’t try to explain itself. And yet I Put a Spell on You endures—haunting, precise, and impossible to pin down.

It’s easy to miss the protest in all the polish. But the protest is there—in the phrasing, in the restraint, in the refusal to be reduced. Simone had no interest in softening her voice to fit the times. Instead, she weaponised elegance. She made poise political.

That tension—between beauty and resistance, performance and truth—is part of why this album still echoes through the work of artists decades on. You can hear Simone’s fingerprints in the quiet fury of Lauryn Hill, the gothic balladry of Jeff Buckley, the weary ache of Lana Del Rey. They all studied this record, whether they admit it or not.

In a year when so many Black voices were shouting to be heard, Nina Simone did something different: she held her gaze. She said, you’ll come to me.

And we still do.