Norah Jones was supposed to release a new album called Pick Me Up Off The Floor next month, but plans changed, and the album is now due for release a month and a half later. Back when Jones announced the LP, she shared the lead single “I’m Alive,” a collaboration with Jeff and Spencer Tweedy. Since the quarantine started, Jones has been doing things like covering the Guns N’ Roses classic “Patience” and participating the the deeply unfortunate “Imagine” celebrity singalong. Today, she releases a new single.
“How I Weep,” the opening track from Pick Me Up Off The Floor is a hushed and pretty piece of music. Jones trills softly over strings and piano, talking about some heavy and unspecified loss. It’s the kind of warm, reassuring song that Jones was put on this planet to make. In a press release, Jones has this to say:
My friend got me into poetry this year. 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.”
Listen below.
Pick Me Up Off The Floor is out 5/8 on Blue Note.
