I put a spell on you

It's time to talk about Nina. I tell my story with two songs included in this album: feeling good and I Put a Spell on You. They both have I don't know how many versions. I got rid of several until I found these. One is my favorite among all and the other shares the top of the podium with the original version.

I found the first one on a Muse album, the Origin of Symmetry (Mushroom Records, 2001), which by 2010 was breaking my head and now I can't stand it (Jeff Buckley arrived, recorded an album, died, and left a trail of imitators of whom one or two are saved, with the filter open, because you hurry me up a little bit and I'll get Thom Yorke out of the crowd, put him in the lifeboat and the rest of them manage while the Titanic sinks). feeling good It was the theme that I liked the most on the phonogram. I shuddered. He keeps doing it. I thought Matt Bellamy was the author, and I was killing for him. Then I heard it in Randy Crawford's voice, with that calmness of his. I started looking and found out that it was one of the most promiscuous songs that exist, and that thanks to Nina it became popular. I should have known. It was the tenth track. When on an album there is a song clearly above the rest, and it is located from track eight onwards, check why, either it is a version or a remasterOr something weird is happening. Obviously, there are always nice exceptions to this stupid rule.

The international feeling good of Nina is legendary. Witch. Lovely. Margaret Jones. Euterpe. Hair crisper. Lacrimal turbine. I hate you for being beautiful, for shows. Everything in this song is moving: the trombones, the strings, the piano that first insists, possessed, on the same note, and then whispers in the background; and well, her. There are two moments where, as Roly Berrío says, it's time to die. One, when the priestess oxygenates her voice and says: “…sleep in peace when day it's done, that's what I mean”. Two, when, a little further on, he rears up and shouts: “Oh! Freedom is mine! And I know how I feel”. Those of us who sing with her, if we dwell on the fact that it is 1965 and Nina is a woman, American and black, we will feel a tingling in our backs, our voices will crack, our eyes will water and we will spit on whoever is in front of us while we pronounce the fs of “freedom" Y "feel"

I heard the other song first from John Fogerty, with Creedence. I knew quickly that it wasn't his. Wikipedia pointed out that the author was an eccentric blues singer. Then came the one by Joe Cocker and the one that Joss Stone sings on a Jeff Beck album that I no longer have; until I found the original version at a Film Festival, in the dark and almost empty room of 23 and 12.

It was a Jim Jarmusch movie, stranger than paradise. I remember very little, but I did love it, that it was in black and white and that in the first scene you could see a white girl, with dark hair, wearing a trench coat and a suitcase in her hand, walking confused while in the background the creepy I Put a Spell on You by Screamin' Jay Hawkins. I was hooked from the start. A wise man, that Jarmusch.

To this day I don't know which I like more, Nina's version or the original, but let's talk about Nina, that's why we're here. A very personal interpretation. You can't do anything else when this girl is singing. You have to stop and attend to it; she demands it, with that nasal voice that the sax seems to have caught because it sounds sloppy, as if the air were tied to it.

Among all, this is the one that most emphasizes the word “you”. The "you” of the other versions is more general. In them any of us can be the recipient of the curse. But Nina is so temperamental, so flesh, bone and blood, she embodies the song in such a way that her “you” has a first and last name. The "you” Nina is neither you nor me, just the specific person she sings to at that moment; as if he were telling us: “Pipo, this isn't with you, so don't come later to fall in love with me and ask me for autographs. Sit down and be moved if you want to watch a woman express her love, but I'm not talking to you."

The disc is full of interpretations like this: Tomorrow is My Turn, don't take me away, July Tree, One September Day, You've Got To Learn. It is an abuse. I know it's no surprise to anyone, if this woman is one of the greatest things that has happened to music.