The room › Artists › Nina Simone
Where to start with Nina Simone
Start with I Love Your Lovin' Ways — Wild Is the Wind, 1966. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 18 Nina Simone tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 18 Nina Simone tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 18 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The collection leans hard on one record: 11 of the 18 tracks come from Wild Is the Wind alone.
The dates here run from 1965 to 2015. They are the dates attached to the releases in this room rather than recording dates, so the later ones are likely reissues — but 50 years is still more than one version of the artist.
The tracks are filed across 5 genres, most often jazz, blues and vocal jazz, so the room does not treat this as a single-shelf artist.
The energy knob swings 60 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
I Love Your Lovin' Ways — Wild Is the Wind, 1966. Of the 18 Nina Simone tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the ambient end
Lilac Wine — Wild Is the Wind, 1966. The lowest energy reading of any Nina Simone track in the room (8 out of 100). This is as far towards ambient as the collection goes.
If you want the driving end
Obeah Woman — It Is Finished. The highest energy reading here, at 68 out of 100 — a 60-point swing across the collection towards driving.
Where Nina Simone sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Nina Simone's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Wild Is the Wind | 1966 | 11 |
| The Best Of Nina Simone | 1969 | 1 |
| Freedom for the Stallion | 1971 | 1 |
| Silk & Soul | 1967 | 1 |
| It Is Finished | — | 1 |
| Miss Simone: The Hits | 2015 | 1 |
| Pastel Blues | 1965 | 1 |
Every Nina Simone track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Trouble In Mind | Pastel Blues | 1965 |
| Black Is The Color Of My True Love's Hair | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Break Down And Let It All Out | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Either Way I Lose | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Four Women | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| I Love Your Lovin' Ways | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| If I Should Lose You | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Lilac Wine | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| That's All I Ask | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| What More Can I Say? | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Why Keep On Breaking My Heart | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Wild Is The Wind | Wild Is the Wind | 1966 |
| Cherish | Silk & Soul | 1967 |
| Suzanne | The Best Of Nina Simone | 1969 |
| 22nd Century | Freedom for the Stallion | 1971 |
| Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood - Live at Westbury Music Fair, Westbury, NY - April 1968 | Miss Simone: The Hits | 2015 |
| I Shall Be Released | — | — |
| Obeah Woman | It Is Finished | — |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Nina Simone's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Sam Wilkes — jazz, 37 tracks
- Where to start with Pat Metheny — jazz, 17 tracks
- Where to start with Gregory Uhlmann, Josh Johnson, Sam Wilkes — jazz, 11 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Nina Simone as a solo artist, from Tryon, the United States and born in 1933. Its contributors tag the artist jazz, soul, blues and vocal jazz. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Nina Simone tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 18, across 7 albums. 16 of them carry a date, running from 1965 to 2015. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 18 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 18 of these 18 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.