Norah Jones Revisits “Come Away With Me” Live From Apple Music Studios

In 2022, Norah Jones marked the 20th anniversary of her debut and the single that put her on the map by revisiting some of her original recordings for the album. A breakthrough for the then-21-year-old artist, Come Away With Me topped charts worldwide and in the U.S., including the Billboard 200, when it was released in 2002, and earned Jones two Grammy Awards for Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album.

The title track was also a breakthrough for Jones and a song she continues to revisit 24 years later, including during her recent live performance for Apple Music.

During her soulful Live From Apple Music Studios performance in Los Angeles, lit by an orange backdrop, Jones also recalled the making of the song, which was one of the first ones she had ever written, and how it evolved for her over more than two decades.

“Come away with me” is one of the first songs I wrote,” said Jones. “It’s a very simple song, but it’s been really special to see it evolve over the years.”

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She continued, “For me, the core memory of this song is still just writing it in my tiny apartment in the East Village in the middle of the night. And I didn’t have a piano, I had a guitar. And I only knew three or four chords. And that’s exactly how many chords are in this song, I think.”

The Apple series, which invites artists from the 1990s and ’00s to perform some of their most beloved songs live in the studio, premiered on February 17 with the Goo Goo Dolls’ John Rzeznik performing an acoustic version of the band’s 1998 hit “Iris.”

For Jones, who released her ninth album, Visions, in 2024, “Come Away With Me” was a song that blurred the lines within genre. In a 2022 interview with American Songwriter, Jones reflected on how Come Away With Me was not a jazz album, though her roots were in jazz piano and regular gigs at jazz clubs, and how, in retrospect, the songs seem more melancholy and innocent.

“I think about the album, and I think about all those songs,” Jones said. “It’s so easy to write dark, sad songs,” she added. “There’s a real sense of melancholy on the whole album because that’s always been where I’ve drifted. I love slow songs. I love ballads. I love sad songs, so the album has that sort of threat of melancholy, but it also had from a songwriting perspective and a lyrical perspective, an innocence to it.”

Photo: Courtesy of Apple Music