KANDACE SPRINGS UNVEILS UNEXPECTED TAKE ON “WHAT WAS I MADE FOR?” FROM THE FILM BARBIE
What’s an internationally acclaimed jazz artist doing recording a pop hit from a blockbuster movie? It’s a question singer/pianist Kandace Springs is bound to be hearing in the coming weeks following this release of “What Was I Made For?” – her surprising version of the GRAMMY®-winning, Oscar-nominated song that Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell penned for the movie Barbie. And her answer is quite simple: “It’s a great song.” “What Was I Made For?” is a lead-in single to Springs’ first album in four years, Run Your Race, set for April 5 release via SRP Records, which released Rihanna’s first seven albums.
Springs – who will play a sold-out show at Zankel Hall Center Stage at Carnegie Hall in New York City tomorrow, February 24 – had no intention of doing a pop cover last fall, when she went to see the film. “This song came on at the end, and it knocked me out, I wasn’t expecting it. It’s so beautiful – the music, the words, her singing, everything. I fell in love with it right away. And when I feel that way about a song, I’ve got to learn it.”
And, as fans of Kandace know, when she covers a song, she makes it uniquely her own. The result in this case is a gorgeous, jazz-tinged ballad that at times bears only a passing resemblance to the original version. One way in which she changed the song was a particular lyric. Instead of singing “Don’t tell my boyfriend, it’s not what he’s made for,” she sings, “I’ll tell my girlfriend…. that’s what she’s made for.”
“As a woman who has a girlfriend, I didn’t feel honest singing the original lyric,” Kandace explains. “I know that Billie and Finneas wrote it from the point of view of Barbie’s character, but I had to sing it from my point of view. When I do someone else’s song, I’ve got to make it me. It’s not disrespecting the original. It’s actually paying it respect, by showing that it’s such a great song, it can be done in so many different ways.”
While purists may look askance at a jazz artist covering a current pop hit while it is still on the radio, Kandace knows that she is actually following a time-honored tradition. “People forget that Ella Fitzgerald, Carmen McRae and all the great jazz singers did pop hits all the time, it’s what everybody did back in those days. It’s how they sang it that made it jazz.”
Springs, who was praised by her late mentor Prince as having a “voice that can melt snow,” shot the official video for “What Was I Made For?” while she was in Espinho, Portugal, to perform at a Billie Holiday tribute concert last December.
“What Was I Made For?” arrives as an unexpected addition to the album Run Your Race, the creation of which has been a two-year labor of love for Kandace. The album and its title song are a tribute to her late father Kenneth “Scat” Springs, a great singer in his own right who passed away in 2021. “My dad was a track star in college. But he spent the last two years of his life in a wheelchair. After he passed away, I was inspired to write this song, to tell him that I know that he is free now, to run like he used to,“ she explains. The song is the most personal and heartfelt of Springs’ career, and a fitting centerpiece to her new album, which she says is “absolutely the most personal record I’ve ever made, or ever will make.”
Run Your Race is the follow-up to Kandace’s 2020 album, The Women Who Raised Me, which won praise from The New Yorker, DownBeat, NPR and numerous others, and featured a duet with NorahJones.
Kandace Springs – Tour Dates
2/24 – New York, NY – Zankel Hall Center Stage at Carnegie Hall
2/29, 3/1, 3/2, 3/3 – Seattle, WA – Jazz Alley
4/4, 4/5 – Los Angeles, CA – The Sun Rose
4/13 – Birmingham, AL – Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame
4/23 – Paris, France — Le Duc des Lombards