Norah Jones Keeps The Music Tastefully Spare In A Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

The Tiny Desk is working from home for the foreseeable future. Introducing NPR Music’s Tiny Desk (home) concerts, bringing you performances from across the country and the world. It’s the same spirit — stripped-down sets, an intimate setting — just a different space.

BY BOB BOILEN

Norah Jones keeps the music tastefully spare on her seven records despite a number of collaborators, yet I’ve always wished to hear just her voice and her piano in a room. The unfortunate circumstances of our times have given us something beautiful. For this Tiny Desk (home) concert, Norah Jones sits in her music room; it’s just Norah, her upright piano, her poetry, and that golden voice. I first fell in love with that voice when I heard her debut album in 2002 and remember playing it on All Songs Considered that next week.

Here Norah plays songs from her seventh record, Pick Me Up Off the Floor, songs that hold the world’s weight and the power to uplift. You can hear that on “I’m Alive,” which she co-wrote with Jeff Tweedy. It’s a song that at once feels the pain of politics and a pain that is personal. “You feel your soul / Get hollowed-out / While the world implodes / You just live without.” Yet the refrain is what lingers, “Oh, I’m alive / Yes, I’m alive / But I’m alive / Oh, I’m alive.” Thanks, Norah, for this beautiful affirmation.

SET LIST

• “How I Weep”
• “Heartbroken, Day After”
• “I’m Alive”
• “To Live”

MUSICIANS

Norah Jones: vocals, piano

CREDITS

Video by: Norah Jones; Audio by: Norah Jones; Producer: Bob Boilen; Audio Mastering Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Video Producer: Morgan Noelle Smith; Executive Producer: Lauren Onkey; Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann