Annie Lennox - Strange Fruit (Live) 

Do you where this quote is from ??

Think a little about the life of Palestinians: "if I don't take your land someone else will" - 2021, Jerusalem, from a Jewish migrant to a Palestinian Christian or Muslim... This is complete denial of respect and existence. Is this racism or could this be even worse?

& the gov't. attempted to get Billie to stop singing this song but, she wouldn't quit so they then went after her anyway

& still republicans found it appropriate to vote against an anti-lynching law which tells me that the only reason for keeping racism around is because they enjoy it

& republicans thought it right to vote against anti lynching legislation since this does still happen here, remeber that when you go to the polls

It might just be me but I've noticed that Annie does actually deepen her voice on songs she obviously feels needs to be sung deeply. She is very talented and has got quite the range in her voice- she can vary it as she needs and wants to, I think sometimes she doesn't get enough credit for that, especially as many singers seam to lose the power in their voice or even the ability to sing all together as they get older but she has not only kept her voice as great as from the start but she has even perfected it and got better and better over time, a mark of true genius talent.

I was the same way! I saw the name and thought "Huh..I know her from somewhere." Then "Man! What a powerhouse!" It wasn't until I did a search that I remembered where I knew the name from. I had no idea she had so much grit and power behind her.

@@ProwlingTiger1 I don’t think she perfected it at all in my opinion the original will always be the best as she saw things and felt things Annie hasn’t lived through so her version wouldn’t be as real or as heart felt, it’s good just no where near as good as the original.

that's a natural occurance as you age it happens to all women even those who don't sing

@@veronicaalleyne kind of hope you're right, just today I noticed how my mom's voice still is very high-pitched, and I took after her... I wouldn't mind a deeper voice at all.

Europeans are racist too. It's just in AMerica we freely express racism openly

Did it justice ms holiday did it better

@@LuvvMono don't be stupid absolutely ms holiday did it better but annie did it justice and thats good!!!

@@kukuhsantoso5190 don’t be stupid I said what I said you may have an opinion but it’s trash

@@kukuhsantoso5190 what tf do you mean "did it justice"??

@@wlnyuh2330 did the song justice

Cheryl Williams LANA!

Cheryl Williams you couldn't have said it any better!

+Cheryl Williams Even more so than Billy Holiday I've always been moved to distraction by Nina Simone's rendering of this beautiful, terrible song. Annie Lennox now, for me, has earned the right to stand beside these other two performers.

+Cheryl Williams I agree, this is a beautiful version. You might want to listen to the version recorded by Siouxsie Sioux too. It's a unique take on the song.

+Cheryl Williams This was a beautiful, and hauntingly sad song. I was deeply moved. Annie is superb.

The more i read of these comments the more ignorance i read.

Tevin Edwards I don't know how black you are but Caribbean "blacks" shuffle & jive for whites all the time So I understand why You want to hold hands & sing Kumbaya to ppl that hate you ass.

You ought to take the "Love" out of your name and put it in your heart. There's an obvious lack.

I'm not going to dig for the nasty comments everyone is talking about. Most of the ones I've seen so far are the positive ones. I'm glad to see there are a few folks with hearts and brains enough to realize we all have the same blood running in our veins, and our atoms have no color. Hatred does have a color: UGLY. Annie Lennox sang this beautifully.

Shuffle and Jive? You are clearly misinformed... Lack of education certainly goes hand in hand with ignorance

Trimmed Lamp this is a lie

Huh, I thought Nina Simone created this?

Queendom vision it’s true

Essence Thomas no she covered it. First person to sing the song was Billie Holiday

The person who brought this poem to life ORIGINALLY was BILLIE HOLIDAY. Consequently her career went down hill after doing so but her spirit was definitely included with the words of this poem. I love Annie Lennox and I commend her for choosing to revive this poem but let's not forgot who sung it FIRST.

Ub40's is the best cover of this song by far

Michael Jones you are so rude and ignorant !!

Nostalgia actually means "pain of the return" (so, indeed, homesick). In Ancient Greek "algos" means pain and "nostos" return. Nostalgia originally referred to Ulysses' suffering from being away from his family and home. I am afraid your etymology - although far from absurd - is incorrect.

Michael Jones hello

Hello haw are you

That's what I like about her, the way she handles sensitive yet shouldn't be ignored topics and issues, many famous people when they want to present such things often do it in a way that just irritates or annoys by being too in your face, preachy, patronising or even insulting to both the subject matter and they people they are reaching out to, thus even if they are absolutely right in what they are saying, the message and point is lost because of how they delivered it. That's not true of Annie Lennox- she always does her best to be respectful, honourable and sensitive to topics or points she is bringing to people's attention. Music has a power and she is an artist who uses that power wisely and respectfully and tactfully, credit to her.

I think so too, although I am conflicted.

The song was written by a Jew. It is NOT a black song.

Ela cantou com muito respeito

Then you should also listen to Billies version. Both make my cry

@@neene7 and nina in my opinion she sang It the best

um I won't say who sang it best, I just gave another option.... for me it wasn't a competition. They all sang it beautifully and made it their own.....

The instruments are played better here but I still think that Nina Simone sang it best. Nina makes the words come upfront!

Jeffersonian Racism I agree. I love Nina Simone’s version. It’s so moving and devastating and awful and beautiful all at the same time, it never fails to bring a tear to my eye pictures those words.

HelenaBlack80 I agree as well. Nina Simone’s raw soul can be heard in her rendition of this song.

Billie Holiday the original vocalist to perform this does the most heartbreaking, heartwrenching, rendition of this song. The song was originally written as a poem by Abel Meerpol around 1938 or 1939. I had read that he asked Ms. Holiday to sing it. Which she did at Cafe Society in New York, 1939. I agree that Annie Lennox performed this haunting song piercingly and with passion. And agreed that Nina Simone put a rawness that very touching and moving! This song leaves me with tears, and no words to express the years, decades of pain associated with it.

This the best version yet

Charlie Charlie never questioned her intelligence. Do you know the meaning of the song? Did you actually look at the interviews? Because I HAVE read one of her interviews about the song which is the point of my comment. The song is about lynching black people but she nor you are acknowledging the lynchings. She's singing this because of hurt and pain and whatever other troubles the world is facing today which is basically taking away from the message of the song. She whitewashed it. So I'm feverishly trying to find her point as well as yours.

OH get over yourself. This is by NO MEAN smooth or polished. It is ferocious. Nina Simone has never been able to sing in tune. She could walk the walk, but, baby, this is a Jewish song, written by a white Jew! So I sugess you think Jessye Norman and Leontyne Price did not have the voices for European Opera because they were Black. If you were a musician, you would NEVER write such crap!!

I very much agree , this version doesn’t hit deep it’s very clean and history was anything but

Being horrified by it is different from actually suffering from it and having ancestors that suffered from it.

Well for a start, I don't think anyone today can say that they've suffered from the same degree of racism present back then. The time when it was sung by people directly affected by it has long past. If this "it" you're referring to people having suffered from is discrimination, then Annie, having lived her life as a woman, will certainly be familiar with how that feels in modern society. Speaking as someone with darker skin, being black does not give you the moral high-ground to say you care about something more because of your skin colour, and I think encouraging that is even more horrific.You only need to here the raw emotion and horror in Annie's flawless voice to see that she's feels that pain just as much as any of the rest of us, if not more.

+Nick9n You comparing being a blonde, white woman and being a black person in today's society alone shows that you truly don't get it tbh.

+electraambrosia It may be different in America, but over here in the UK there is comparitively little anti-black discrimination. We're talking about the emotion she feels and conveys in this song and she does it just as well as any black woman in this country. She understands the pain as much any European, black or not, can nowadays having not experienced that degree of racism. But she can relate to being discriminated against because of something out of their control, and it shows in her music.

+Nick9n i think that Tamirs mother would disagree about no one suffering that bad

Lynching went on through the 70s.

***** a white person WROTE The song. She has given quite a few interviews where she discusses the meaning of the songs and lynching's specifically. She even mentions lynchings on the liner notes in the CD. Does she have to get a tattoo on her head before you stop being a victim about it?

***** If she appeared to dilute the meaning of the song Rosie, I doubt very much that it was intentional. She's one of the good guys.

***** Yes, but that was ONE interview out of many, surely you can't hold that against her, nitpick and say she whitewashed its original meaning, because according to other interviews, etc (as people have indeed pointed out), she fully acknowledges the song's origins?

She is not from the Caucasus.

Jadi Nicolas black ppl ALL OVER not just the 🇺🇸

Everybody knows her from Eurythmics (Sweet Dreams), but so less know about her solocareer. I can´t understand that too.

Annie Lennox is the queen of her own version ofthis song, written by a jew. it is not a Black song.

NO. People got angry when she said that this song was about all oppression everywhere and against everyone. It isn't. It is very, VERY clear that this song is about the horror of a Black person being lynched and killed, just for being black where white bigots lived. There are other songs which are about oppression in general; other songs which deal with other hardships. If that's all you care about, then listen to those other songs. This song is about the systemic and overarching oppression and hatred which people of color endure simply for existing. Yes, Annie Lennox sings this song very well, yes, she has a beautiful voice, yes, she has dealt with her own harships, but she was definitely tone-deaf in attempting to relate this song to all oppression, including forms of oppression against white people. When, especially in the USA, have you heard about a lynching against a white victim? Hmm? Never? Oh, I see.

I agree. This song is about black pain.

@@Sovairu Well if you wanna get specific, it isn't about all forms of black oppression in America; it's about the lynching of American blacks. While one could extrapolate a message about all American black oppression, you need only extrapolate one step further to reach a message on oppression of all forms.

Robert Cohn No. The sweet magnolia, the poplar trees, the southern breeze, the black bodies swinging, the burning flesh ... these, and everything else in the song, are very specific images. These images are associated with the ruthless lynchings and other such murders of black folks in the southern United States, perpetrated in the name of systemic hatred by racists. Such imagery is not associated with other oppression, especially not against any white folks. With such imagery, one can only conclude that the song extends to oppression faced by blacks; at most, the oppression faced by the victims of racism in this country. Any systemic oppression against whites, is not the same as the oppression against victims of racism. So trying to claim that this song, "Strange Fruit," with its imagery detailing the atrocities of racism, is applicable to white folks or others who have never faced racism, is ludicrous. Or at least, it is misinformed. As such, the song cannot be applied to all oppression against everyone, everywhere. It's a great song, sure, and white people are allowed to listen to it and love it, and white people are definitely allowed to learn from it, but we can't just apply all forms of oppression to ourselves because we want to. We must respect that not everything applies to us.

@@Sovairu Never said anything about white people, and yes, I agree that applying this to all systemic oppression is a further extrapolation than applying it to all systemic black oppression (as acknowledged in my original reply), but it's an extrapolation either way nonetheless

I'm so sorry you have to go through this. I'm just... So sorry. I don't understand why humans are like this.

We can't change the past unfortunately, and in all human history there were many wrong things that should never of happened and people need to let go of the past in the sense of they need to stop using wrongs of the past as reasons to keep hate going, there are feuds and hates that go back hundreds and even thousands of years ago that are still going today- why? because people keep such things alive and going, they fuel it, so people need stop the "well 200 years ago, your people did this so i am going to keep hating them and you for it", "oh yeah, well 300 years your people did that and we will keep hating you for that". How bout letting hate for the sake of hate go? The wrongs of the past sadly- happened and I just as much as anyone, wishes the power to go back and change those wrongs existed but it doesn't, the one thing that people do have power over is the present and future, learn from those wrongs and do one's best to ensure those wrongs are never repeated again and I can hear some people saying "er some wrongs got repeated a lot", correct, they did, can't deny or argue that but same lack of power to change it issue applies because its past, instead focus on where and what you do have the power to change. Yes by all means look at the past but not as means to keep hate going but as a means to learn from, and when someone from the other side does stand up and says- "yes what happened in the past was indeed wrong", don't hate them for it or think "oh what would you know about it", they are standing up because they don't want wrongs of past repeated again either, work with them to cause positive change for the present and future, the thing people do have control over, the future is whatever people make it, make it fair and good and happy and positive.

@@ProwlingTiger1 Very well said! There have been feuds among humans for thousands of years for everything from perceived superiority to minor personal indiscretions which impact generations. We shouldn't forget or rewrite history but we don't have to keep living in it either.

Thank you 😔

Dang I'm finna delete my comment you worded that perfectly and you totally changed my outlook on the situation thank you for that 🙏🙏🙏 ❤

The song is devastating. I'd never heard it in it's entirety. I think you've beautifully addressed the controversy and redirected in a loving way. Love is the way. I'm touched by the song and it's deep representation and inherent pain. Blessings. ☮️💖

We stopped here to see and hear Annie Lennox. To see and hear Summertime again. It's all right then. 2:02

Excellent performance. Amazing version of Strange Fruit. 3:03

Let's go back tomorrow. We combine and adjust this return now. Until then. 3:13

Try to ad Beth Hart on the list.

That's true. The only people who could possibly feel all of the pain and fear of the event that inspired this song are the two young black men who were lynched. But, I think you do a great disservice to the struggle for equality by anyone when you denigrate the effort of those who do empathize. We can't achieve equality for any group by limiting its struggle to itself. Sort of defeats the purpose, doesn't it?

You are absolutely correct. The song was written by a Jewish man by the name of Abel Meeropol. I can appreciate Annie Lennox's version but Billie Holiday's version resonates with me more. Regardless of who sings the lyrics, the image (s) of the "Strange Fruit" will always haunt me.

CEN1386 you can't make something so saturated in race not be about race

+1Dispretty2me thank you

Black Goddess I gotch you girl. Its amazing how blind and sheep like the world is in 2015....but then again look at poor Ahmend Mohammed and Natasha Mchenna

+CEN1386 He wrote it as a protest poem. It was not a strange sight to see Jews and African Americans working together for civil rights back into the 30's. He put it to music and his wife, a white woman, sang it first but I believe he gave it to Billie Holiday to record. Nina Simone does a much different version. It is great (never like Billie or Annie for me) but great.