“I Put a Spell on You” by Nina Simone

Nina Simone made "I Put a Spell on You" the title track of her 1965 album, reaching back to a song Screamin' Jay Hawkins had first cut in 1956 and bending it into something all her own. Hal Mooney arranged and produced it, Rudy Stevenson plays guitar, and Simone handles both the piano and the vocal, so the whole hex runs straight from her hands to her throat.

Hawkins's original had become a cult favorite and the biggest seller of his career without ever reaching the Billboard pop or R&B charts. In Simone's hands the spell sounds less like a novelty than a confession, and it's hard to hear it any other way afterwards.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.