“Strange Fruit” -  Billie Holiday: https://youtu.be/-DGY9HvChXk?si=3wWC2WAl7oZK2_P9

“Strange Fruit” - Nina Simone: https://youtu.be/BnuEMdUUrZQ?si=ZPnjD9Z2d3xeZEMq 

“Strange Fruit” - Siouxsie and the Banshees: https://youtu.be/7VPlqblP3uE?si=jOa0jw2q9zlf6ZNp 

“Blood on the Leaves” -  Kanye West: https://youtu.be/KEA0btSNkpw?si=bcTSRkYY3J7_vZo2 

The song “Strange Fruit” is one of the most important protest songs in American history. Written and composed by Abel Meeropol, lyrics were drawn from his poem “Bitter Fruit,” recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939. The poem reflect the horror experience of lynchings of African Americans during 1930s. Meeropol was inspired by a photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Indiana, which consist of Black bodies hanging on the tree, exposed the horror scene of racial violence and injustice. 

In 1939, Billie Holiday debuted “Strange Fruit” at Cafe Society in New York, a nightclub known for its racially integrated audience. The song was arranged by Josephson, the club owner, to be her closing piece. The waiter would stop, the light would dim, and the spotlight on Billie along with the song would create a serious, prayer-like atmosphere. The audience are made to be fully focused on the song, the lyrics, and the message. Holiday attempted to record the song with her label at the time, Columbia Records, but the company hesitated because of the political concerns in the south, instead, she turned to Milt Gabler and got the permission to record at the Commodore label. In an era that is still sensitive to racial violence and injustice, it was extremely difficult for a Black woman to work in the music industry. The fear of southern backlash for a label and the safety risk that brought to Holiday, as a Black, female, anti-racism activist. At the time, it also violated the expectations for female singers; while the major labels were owned by white male, they wanted female singers to deliver romantic love songs or light pop for entertainment. 

Billie Holiday’s version of “Strange Fruit” in 1939 is slow, sorrowful, and heavy. The low-pitch and extended minor chords on piano sets the solemn tone of the song along with Holiday’s deep and rich vocals. Charles Mueller praises Holiday’s vocal as: “elegant subtle performance, which allowed the words of the song to speak for themselves without an indulgent interpretation” (Mueller, 2010). The lyrics delivered straight to the audience between her breath between words and intention she engraved in the phrasing. The environment that Cafe Society created forces the audience to absorb the message, word by word, the painful struggles of Black history. 

Samuel Galen Ng (2023) commented on Holiday as a professional mourner, whose performances naturally create a sense of vulnerability shared by Black people and induced the Black consciousness. This significantly broadened her political influence, Ng also addressed that a cultural critic, Emily Lordi’s description of Holiday: “to produce a haunting effect among her audiences” by implying patterns with subtle, unsettling differences like repeating or repurpose a specific word. “In this way, Holiday conjured feelings of both intimacy and, through the alienating disruption of that intimacy, haunting, which established the limits of familiarity and lingered with audience members long after performances” (Ng, 2023). Holiday used her voice to amplified this racial pain and raise public awareness to support anti-lynching, turning the Cafe Society from a place of entertainment to civil rights activism.  

Jack Schiffman, whose family owned the Apollo Theater, expressed his overwhelming reaction as an audience member of Holiday's: “Billie Holiday’s ‘Strange Fruit’ are so quiet you want to cry out your heartbreak… Not only did you see the ‘fruit’ evoked in all its graphic horror, but you saw in Billie Holliday the wife or sister or mother of one of the victims beneath the tree, almost prostrate with sorrow and fury… And when she weighed the final words from her lips, there was not a soul in that audience, black or white, who did not feel half strangled. A moment of oppressively heavy silence followed, and then a kind of rustling sound I had never heard before” (Ng, 2023). His description showed Holiday’s significant impact on her audience in the first place, and her powerful performance created a shared moment that awakened Black resistance across a broad community regardless of race. 

Nina Simone, as a civil rights activist and artist, rendered “Strange Fruit” in 1965 for the American Civil Rights Movement. Instead of Billie Holiday’s original sorrowful mourn, Simone’s version sounded a little more aggressive and active. Her version became one of the anthems for the Civil Rights Movement and powered to gather and strengthen the community against racism. Musically, Simone has soft and steady piano chords playing quietly as a background, her voice directly stood out, the richness of the vocal strengthened  the song and shifted away the atmosphere of grief. In the context of racial segregation and discrimination, and the historical events in 1963, The Birmingham Campaign and 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing that directly resulted in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, “Strange Fruit” not only represents the past violence but sharpened the existence of ongoing injustice towards Black people and white supremacy. Simone has transformed the song from a historical mourn into an active, immediate interaction with the civil movement.  

Another version of “Strange Fruit” recorded by a British post-punk band, Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1987 for their album, Through the Looking Glass, giving a totally different instrumental framework and arrangement. They replaced the soft piano chords with the band and opened the song with whooshing wind sound and dramatic strings, giving strong first impressions. The interlude was infused with their signature gothic, post-punk, and New Orleans-style funeral march rhythmic work. In Mueller’s (2010) study, “Gothic Covers: Music, Subculture and Ideology,” he explains “Strange Fruit” gave Siouxsie and the Banshees immense “sign value.” Because the gothic aesthetic embraces the ability to make audiences uncomfortable and boundary violation, and “Strange Fruit” is perfect for its stark and heavy characteristic. 

Musically, Mueller also highlights the band uses studio sound effects like blowing wind and creaking ropes in the beginning and tolling bells during the second verse and New Orleans funeral march, complete brass section for the bridge. Along with high-romantic style, excessive vibrato string quartet. Additionally, the original score was altered with a simplified root-position ostinato in C-sharp minor (Mueller, 2010). He also commented on the vocalist, Ballion’s (Siouxsie Sioux) performance as “Heartfelt and surprisingly restrained.” This contrast with Billie Holiday’s steady and grounded voice, instead, Ballion’s version keeps the audience to focus more on her musical arrangement, not the message or lyrics from the song. The fact that Siouxsie and the Banshees were white, also changes the atmosphere of this historical heavy song. The refined cover perceived by young, white Europeans was not about political, violence, or racial activism, but the vibe of gothic melodrama, dark horror, and a type of venture. The “Strange Fruit” cover demonstrates how the song can be changed when moving into a different culture, the historical meaning might be lost, but it reveals some less obvious qualities could inspire the goth subculture (Mueller, 2010).  

Lastly, another completely different interpretation of the song by Kanye West, he used Nina Simone’s version of “Strange Fruit” in his song “Blood on the Leaves” in 2013. Unlike the covers mentioned previously, he completely changed the instrumental, lyrics, and the arrangement; it sounds like a totally different song. West used hip-hop digital sampling technique to repeat some of Simone’s voice and turned the vocal to have electronic brass effects. Lyrically, he adds on his own sections, not related to the historical context at all, but his own personal struggles and reflection. 

Tommy J. Curry (2014) identifies Kanye West’s album as a “necrophobic aesthetic,” framework developed from visceral fear of death, anti-black, and violence. Curry notes that West’s lyrics using Simone’s sampled pieces to imply that the anti-Black violence still exist. By implanting the original lynching history, West transformed this violence into exposing the modern capitalism and twenty-first century systmic exploitation towards Black people. According to West’s co-writer Che “Rhymefest” Smith, West’s lyrics explicitly target “Plantation Style Capitalism,” linking historical slavery and lynchings to modern private prison systems, restrictive corporate contracts, and urban economic traps (Curry, 2014).

Phillips-Hutton also observed West’s “Blood on the Leaves” to have an arresting dialogue between “the strained sound of Simon’s altered voice and West’s near-robotic autotuned vocals” (Phillips-Hutton, 2025). The repeated voice of Simon’s brought up the history that cannot be easily erased. This type of “re-memory” functions as a bridge to recall the history and develop to address modern racism and critique the new forms of slavery. As Curry notes, the old voice and new lyrics' juxtaposition in West’s song reveals that success, fame, or wealth cannot protect his Black identity from this continuous existing racism and devaluation. 

The song “Strange Fruit” in three versions shows that popular music can serve a distinct purpose and intentions under different circumstances, era, and culture. Whether the original version by Billie Holiday, the “professional mourner,” in 1939 as a route to raise the awareness of resistance against Jim Crow lynchings; Nina Simone's 1965 version for the Civil RIghts activism communication, addresses racial segregation and white supremacy, against racial violence; the cover by a white, British band, Siouxsie and the Banshees in 1987 to develop a subculture of gothic melodrama using the horror, uncomfortable atmosphere from the original song; or Kanye West’s 2013 version that re-memory the song, repeating Simone’s electrified voice of “Strange Fruit” to reflect the violence and systemic racism he faced in his world. Each of them has shifted the intentions and changed how listeners perceive the song, combined with the present settings and personal experiences. For instance, there is a large contrast in the delivered core between the Holiday’s original version and the Siouxsie and the Banshees cover, the focus can vary depending on the artist and circumstances. However, at the same time, all versions kept some degree of connection to the primordial essence of injustice and the horror it brings. 

Finally, “Strange Fruit” shows that popular music can serve as a powerful influence tool. It started with Abel Meeropol’s poem “Bitter Fruit,” then Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” as an iconic “political mourning,” to many later artists’ continuous interpretations in different settings. These versions across era, genre, and culture, each became a unique tool, diverging into different perspectives and reflections to deliver messages to society, and influencing audiences from different backgrounds. Together, they demonstrate the enduring historical significance of the song, for nearly a century, continuing to be re-memorized and re-contextualized. 

References

Curry, T. J. (2014). Pessimistic themes in Kanye West's necrophobic aesthetic: Moving beyond subjects of perfection to understand the New Slave as a paradigm of anti-Black violence. The Pluralist, 9(3), 18–37.

Mueller, C. (2010). Gothic covers: Music, subculture and ideology. Volume! The French Journal of Popular Music Studies, 7(1), 108–132.

Ng, S. G. (2023). Professional mourning: Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and the remaking of Black consciousness. Journal of African American History, 108(4), 630–656.

Phillips-Hutton, A. (2025). Finding, having, borrowing the voice. Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 56, 8–15.