Nina Simone / Compact Jazz - Nina Simone
Feeling Good (From "the Roar of the Greasepaint")
triumphant, hard-won euphoria with an undercurrent of gravity
Video: Release - Topic on YouTube
Lyrics
Birds flying high
You know how I feel
Sun in the sky
You know how I feel
Breeze drifting on by
You know how I feel
It's a new dawn
Showing 7 of 42 lines -- this excerpt supports the analysis alongside it.
Lyrics via LRCLIB (community-contributed). Rights remain with the songwriters and publishers.
Timed (LRC) version available
A synced lyric was found for this track and is stored with the record.
The analysis
A catalogue of natural images -- birds, rivers, blossoms, stars -- builds into a declaration of personal liberation and renewal. Originally a show tune, Simone's version strips it down to a slow, brass-driven testimony that turns simple nature imagery into something closer to emancipation than mere good mood.
renewal freedom self-possession nature as mirror for inner state liberation from constraint
Who's speaking
A first-person speaker addresses an implied listener directly, repeatedly insisting they understand her feeling without her having to name it outright; the voice is confident and unguarded, though the repeated need to assert 'you know how I feel' hints the feeling itself is almost too large for plain statement.
What happens
The song moves through a sequence of natural images -- sky, water, trees, insects, stars -- each offered as evidence of an internal state, before consolidating into the flat, repeated claim of a new dawn and new life. There isn't a plot so much as an accumulation: each verse adds another piece of the natural world as testimony, and the chorus periodically resets the emotional ground until the final verse names the feeling outright as freedom.
How it's built
Built on a simple verse-chorus alternation, each verse assembling three natural images and refrain-like closing to a fixed line, while the chorus repeats the same phrase-set with slight variation. A near-spoken bridge breaks the pattern rhythmically and thematically, shifting from nature imagery to human comprehension ('you know what I mean') before landing on the phrase that names the transformation explicitly. The last verse recycles the opening's structure but replaces vague feeling with the word freedom, closing the loop.
Section by section
Opening verse
Sky and wind imagery establish an outward-looking calm; the repeated assertion that the listener already knows the feeling creates intimacy without explanation.
First chorus
The pivot to explicit language about a new day marks the emotional register more plainly, though the feeling is still gestured at rather than defined.
Second verse
Water and plant imagery deepen the sense of natural continuity and life-force, reinforcing the idea of feeling as something organic and inevitable rather than chosen.
Bridge
A shift into looser, near-conversational phrasing about insects and rest breaks the song's earlier symmetry, functioning as an aside that makes the transformation feel earned through accumulated small proofs before restating the world itself has changed.
Final verse
Celestial and sensory imagery culminates in the direct naming of freedom, converting the abstract 'feeling' from earlier verses into an explicit political and personal claim.
Closing line
The final restatement of feeling good, stripped of surrounding imagery, functions as arrival rather than repetition.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated line affirming shared understanding after each image creates a ritual, incantatory rhythm, turning simple observations into a refrain of insistence.
- cumulative imagery
- Each verse adds a new natural image without ranking or explaining them, building an inventory that suggests wholeness and abundance rather than argument.
- synecdoche
- Small natural details -- a breeze, a blossom, a dragonfly -- stand in for an entire world made new, letting fragments imply totality.
- delayed naming
- The central emotion is withheld through most of the song, referred to only as 'how I feel,' until the final verse names it directly, making the late reveal land as a release.
Reading it
On its surface this is a simple celebration of a fresh start, using nature as evidence of universal renewal. But delivered by Simone -- whose public identity was deeply tied to civil rights advocacy -- the accumulation of freedom-adjacent imagery (open sky, running rivers, unbound animals) and the late, direct use of the word freedom invite a reading of the song as personal liberation with unmistakable political resonance, even though the lyric itself never names any specific struggle. A more conservative reading takes the song purely as a mood piece from a musical, celebrating simple optimism without symbolic weight; both readings are supportable from the text, but Simone's version leans the material toward the former through tone and delivery.
Context
The song was originally written by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse for the musical The Roar of the Greasepaint - the Smell of the Crowd. Simone's recording, released in the mid-1960s, reinterprets the show tune as a slower, more soulful piece, and it has since become closely associated with her voice more than its stage origins. I'm not certain of exact recording details or chart context beyond this, so I'm stating this cautiously.
Listen for
- The way Simone's phrasing lags behind or leans into the beat, turning a simple lyric into something weightier
- The shift in tone at the bridge, where the rhythm loosens into near-speech
- The single use of the word freedom late in the song and how it recontextualizes everything before it
- The horn or instrumental swells beneath the repeated refrain, building tension before each release into 'feeling good'
- How the repeated assertion of shared understanding functions almost as a challenge to the listener
About Nina Simone
Nina Simone was an American composer, concert pianist, singer, songwriter, and civil rights activist. Simone's bearing and stage presence earned her the title the High Priestess of Soul.
1933 - 2003 / United States
Full biography and catalogue