Watch Raye cover Nina Simone and Billie Holiday at Montreux Jazz Festival club show

NME

Raye surprised an audience at Montreux Jazz Festival when she covered songs from Nina Simone and Billie Holiday. Check it out below.

• READ MORE: Raye: “I became a ‘rent-a-verse’. People knew my songs, but they didn’t know me”

During one of the festival’s famous ‘jam sessions’, Raye took to the Memphis stage to perform intimate covers of Holiday’s ‘All of Me’ and Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’.

The intimate show, seen by only a few hundred people, followed her performance on the festival’s main Lake Stage as part of a double bill with Janelle Monáe.

“I also stole a picture of Nina [Simone] from the Jazz festival,” she joked with the audience before starting the cover. “I hope that’s okay, I need something to remember this day by. I’ll put it here, I love her so much.”

It’s the second time she’s covered ‘Feeling Good’ this year, after she shared a stripped-back version for Triple J’s Like A Version series in February.

Shortly after the release of the cover, the series also shared a separate video of Raye explaining her love for the song, and why she decided to put her own spin on it out of respect for Simone.

“I just love that song so much. I’ve been singing it since I was like 11 [or] 12. It’s just one of my all-time favourites. I’m intimidated by anything that Nina sings because I think she’s one of one and can’t be imitated. So I think in my mind I was like ‘I’m going to do it but [in] my own version’ because her version can’t be topped,” she said.

Earlier this month, Raye paid homage to Simone while showcasing her new single ‘Genesis‘ at a pop-up exhibition in New York City. She said she was “so proud” of the seven-minute track, her first new material since her critically acclaimed and BRIT Award-winning debut album ‘My 21st Century Blues’, released last February.

“There is a Nina Simone quote, ‘It is an artist’s duty to reflect the times’,” she said. “This quote is everything to me and I believe the best way I can try to do this is through my art and my music.

“There is so much darkness and pain in this world we live in, and I wanted to create something both as deeply personal and as raw as I could find myself to be about my own mind and the world I see around me.”

She added: “The song is a seven-minute piece that I have crafted and scrutinised over the last year and a half, experimenting with different genres and sonic expressions, beneath all the layers and the lyrics, the underlying message is ‘Let There Be Light’.

“It is a prayer and a plea and a cry for help, and I really hope this song will be able to bring some hope, the way this music does for me, to those who need it most.”

Last week, Raye performed ‘Genesis’ on an active train station platform in London. The singer took to Selhurst station, located just a few minutes away from the BRIT School – which she attended for two years from the age of 14 – to play the track with a jazz band.

Raye, who has repeatedly spoken out for songwriter rights, recently won the Ivor Novello award for Songwriter Of The Year. Her BRITs 2024 wins included Album Of The Year (‘My 21st Century Blues’).

In a four-star review of the LP, NME wrote: “Raye recently said that such bold and brave declarations wouldn’t have been released had she still been signed to a major label. Granted her creative independence, though, the hard-fought ‘My 21st Century Blues’ is unequivocally Raye from start to finish.”

Raye is among those rumoured to be headlining Glastonbury next year. This summer, though, she’s set to perform on the main stage at Reading & Leeds 2024.

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