• “All You See Is Glory”: The Burden of Stardom and the Tragedy of Nina Simone

    Author(s):
    Richard Elliott (see profile)
    Date:
    2016
    Group(s):
    American Musicological Society, Cultural Studies, Music and Sound
    Subject(s):
    Music, Popular music, Aging--Study and teaching, Celebrities--Study and teaching
    Item Type:
    Conference paper
    Conf. Title:
    IASPM Australia New Zealand Conference, , Australia, 5th December 2015
    Conf. Org.:
    Australian National University
    Conf. Loc.:
    Canberra
    Conf. Date:
    4-6 December 2015
    Tag(s):
    Nina Simone, Janis Ian, cover version, stardom, Popular Music Studies, Age studies, Voice, Celebrity studies
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M6V86X
    Abstract:
    Although most often remembered as an icon of the civil rights era, Nina Simone enjoyed (and occasionally endured) a long career during which the bulk of the songs she performed dealt with the politics, pains and precariousness of the self. Her work—always suffused with longing, sensuality and the passion of being—took on, in her later career, what might be termed a ‘defiant melancholy’ as she used her songs and live performances to navigate the burden of her past. As much as she had been a movement intellectual in the 1960s, Simone had been a star and the sense of loss of both political possibility (signalled by the ‘failure’ of the civil rights movement in the USA) and stardom (signalled by the decline in her popularity) flavoured much of the material she produced from the mid-1970s onwards. In this paper, I explore Simone’s extraordinary performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, and in particular her rendition of Janis Ian’s song ‘Stars’. I begin by reflecting on Ian’s own experience of celebrity and the way she articulated it in ‘Stars’, then I move on to compare Simone’s version, analysing it in the context of the festival appearance in which it appeared and in the longer text of Simone’s life as an artist and celebrity. Drawing on scholarship connected to celebrity, authorship and liveness, I read the song as exemplifying and challenging narratives of fame and artistic biography. I also reflect on cover versions as modes of authorship, authentication and experience and as live performance as an interface for stars and their audiences.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    6 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved
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