Feeling Good

Written for the British musical *The Roar of the Greasepaint*, and rescued from show-tune obscurity by Simone's 1965 reading, which turns a number about liberation into an actual act of it. It opens a cappella — voice alone, unaccompanied, low in her chest, naming birds and sun and sky in short declarative bursts while the silence around her does the work of suspense. Hal Mooney's arrangement holds back for nearly a minute before the brass detonates, and when it lands it is pure swagger: horns stabbing on the offbeat, a strut of a bassline, everything suddenly moving. Simone's instrument is unlike any other singer's here — trained classically, pitched in a contralto so dark it reads as masculine on first hearing, with a vibrato she deploys sparingly and a diction that bites consonants clean. The lyric's inventory of natural freedoms lands differently sung by a Black woman in 1965 America, and Simone knew exactly what she was doing; "it's a new dawn" is not optimism but a threat. It has since been drained by commercials and talent shows, which makes returning to the original necessary. Play it walking out of a building you've decided never to return to.