Norah Jones releases poetic new single "How I Weep"

JONES’ NEW ALBUM PICK ME UP OFF THE FLOOR WILL NOW BE RELEASED ON JUNE 12 ON BLUE NOTE

OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE


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15 APRIL 2020 (TORONTO, ON) – Norah Jones has released “How I Weep,” the poetic opening track of her forthcoming album Pick Me Up Off The Floor, which will now be released June 12 on Blue Note Records. The new song follows the album’s lead single “I’m Alive,” a collaboration with Jeff Tweedy. Pick Me Up Off The Floor is available for pre-order on vinyl, CD, or download. Norah has been posting a series of #StayAtHome videos over recent weeks including a poignant live version of Guns N’ Roses’ “Patience” and a tribute to John Prine with a version of “That’s The Way The World Goes Round.”

Jones recently began writing her own poetry apart from music for the first time in her life. Eventually, several of those poems found their way back into songs on the new album, including “How I Weep,” where the singer mourns an untold loss over pensive piano and humming strings.

“My friend got me into poetry this year,” says Jones. “Her poetry, then she gave me poetry books. That plus reading Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein to my kids every night got me into a word maze and I wrote this poem. I liked it but doubted I would ever release a book of poems and started thinking how to turn it into a song. I edited it down quite a bit and sat with it and a very different kind of song emerged. I immediately thought of this string duo I saw to do an arrangement and I loved how it turned out as if they played the main role of the subject, or the ‘loss’.”

“How I Weep”
How I
How I
Weep for the loss
And it creeps down my chin
For the heart and the hair
And the skin and the air
That swirls itself around the bare
How I weep
How I weep
How I weep and I sleep
And I march and I dance
And I sing and I laugh and I laugh
And I laugh
But inside
But inside
Inside I weep
Inside I weep and I weep
For a loss
That’s so deep
That it hardens and turns into stone

There it stays
And rolls through bones
Till they crumble
And the earth doesn’t spin
It’s got no way to win
And the stars stare down with sad clown faces
And they taunt me
They taunt me
So I run and I run and I run and I run
But I’ve nowhere to go except into the sun

And I weep for the loss and the loss weeps for me
The loss weeps for me
Then it whacks me straight into my stomach at night
It’s a hard blow to take with all of its might
It tries to be sorry it tries to be sweet then it runs out the door as if on two feet
And I stand there and wonder when will I be free
Then I realized I held it, it never held me
It had to hurt me to finally be gone
’Cus I made the mistake of dragging it on
And I wonder what kind of person am I
Who weeps for a loss but can’t tell it goodbye

How I
How I weep
How I weep
How I weep


Jones didn't mean to make another album. After she finished touring 2016's Day Breaks — her beloved return to piano-based jazz — she walked away from the well-worn album cycle grind and into an unfamiliar territory without boundaries: a series of short sessions with an ever-changing array of collaborators resulting in a diverse stream of singles (with Mavis Staples, Rodrigo Amarante, Thomas Bartlett, Tarriona Tank Ball, and more). But then slowly but surely, the session songs Jones hadn't released congealed into that very thing she'd meant to avoid — an album. But Pick Me Up Off The Floor is not some disjointed collage. It holds together beautifully, connected by the sly groove of her piano trios, lyrics that confront loss and portend hope, and a heavy mood that leans into darkness before ultimately finding the light.

"Living in this country — this world — the last few years, I think there's an underlying sense of, 'Lift me up. Let's get up out of this mess and try to figure some things out,'" says Jones. "If there's a darkness to this album, it's not meant to be an impending sense of doom, if feels more like a human longing for connection. Some of the songs that are personal also apply to the larger issues we're all facing. And some of the songs that are about very specific larger things also feel quite personal."

About

Norah Jones first emerged on the world stage with the February 2002 release of Come Away With Me, her self-described “moody little record” that introduced a singular new voice and grew into a global phenomenon, sweeping the 2003 GRAMMY Awards. Since then, Norah has sold 50 million albums globally and become a nine-time GRAMMY-winner. Her songs have been streamed five billion times worldwide. She has released a series of critically acclaimed and commercially successful solo albums—Feels Like Home (2004), Not Too Late (2007), The Fall (2009), Little Broken Hearts (2012), and Day Breaks (2016)—as well as albums with her collective bands The Little Willies, El Madmo, and Puss N Boots featuring Sasha Dobson and Catherine Popper who released their second LP Sister in 2020. The 2010 compilation …Featuring Norah Jones showcased her incredible versatility by collecting her collaborations with artists as diverse as Willie Nelson, Outkast, Herbie Hancock, and Foo Fighters. Since 2018 Jones has been releasing a series of singles including collaborations with artists and friends such as Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy, Thomas Bartlett, Tarriona Tank Ball, Rodrigo Amarante, and Brian Blade. The 2019 singles collection Begin Again gathered seven snapshots of creativity from one of the music world’s most consistently intriguing artists.

April 15, 2020 2:36pm ET by Pressparty  

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