Black Music Sunday: Songs for a happier and hopefully bluer new year

Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 295 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.

Music helped us get through the coronavirus pandemic, which is one of the main reasons that I started this series. We are faced now with democracy crumbling around us, a mad orange racist with goon squads called ICE running our country, and many of us are swamped in both despair and disbelief. 

It seems discordant to even wish someone a happy New Year. But a new year it is, so I thought about songs to play today that make me happy and lift me up, and hopefully they will do the same for you. 

First, we have Nina Simone.

In Simone’s “Feeling Good,” she sings:

Birds flying high, you know how I feel

Sun in the sky, you know how I feel

Breeze driftin’ on by, you know how I feel

[Chorus]
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day
It’s a new life for me, yeah
It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day
It’s a new life for me, ooh
And I’m feeling good

Interestingly, her song was used by a commercial DEI campaign. As a Black woman who has worn her hair natural for more than half a century, I was delighted to see this. 

Nina Simone’s Feeling Good: Celebrating Black Natural Hair

Everyone deserves to feel good—and feel confident in their beauty. But sadly, this isn’t the case for everyone. Black women are 80% more likely to change their natural hair to meet social norms. This has to stop. To expand our work toward eradicating race-based hair discrimination with the CROWN Coalition and the CROWN Act, we’ve joined forces with Verve Records, the Estate of Nina Simone, and 2020 BET Award-winning music video director Sara Lacombe. Our shared vision was to create the first-ever music video for Nina Simone’s iconic 1965 anthem “Feeling Good,” to celebrate Black joy, empowerment, and boundless self-expression.

Nina challenged boundaries and, throughout her career, encouraged empowered expressions of Black culture and beauty. Created in partnership with Dove, the new music video for “Feeling Good” aims to continue Simone’s important legacy by telling a story of Black female empowerment and rejecting imposed expectations. The video follows four generations of Black women living their truths, loving each other, and feeling good.

When I need a “happy” pick-me-up, I replay this Pharrell Williams video:

We are all well aware that we have to double and triple our efforts to get out the vote. If we do that, there might be blue skies ahead—specifically blue states and cities.

“Blue Skies” 

Irving Berlin (1888–1989) is considered one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He was born in Russia and came to the U.S. when he was five. Berlin wrote more than 1,500 songs, including hundreds of hits. “Blue Skies”  was composed as part of a musical called Betsy. Audiences loved the song so much they demanded 24 encores of it on the show’s opening night!

When I look out my window and skies are cloudy and gray, I play this tune to chase the gray away. And I get a double bonus because it’s Ella Fitzgerald.  

Nat King Cole and Patti Page double the uplift.

I play this oldie from Jenifer Lewis to keep my mind on priorities.

For those of you who will be celebrating Epiphany or Three Kings Day, take a look at these archival posts: 

Black Music Sunday: Celebrating Epiphany and Three Kings Day

Caribbean Matters: Come celebrate the Three Kings!

Please join me in the comments section below for more and to share your own favorite uplifting/happy songs!