Weyes Blood – “When You’re Smiling”

Neil Krug

Weyes Blood – “When You’re Smiling”

Neil Krug

Este Haim is one of the executive soundtrack producers for the new National Geographic show A Small Light, a dramatic miniseries about the life of Anne Frank. For the soundtrack, Haim has recruited a bunch of her contemporaries, and they’ve covered songs from the World War II era. We’ve already posted the contributions from Danielle Haim, Kamasi Washington, Angel Olsen, and Sharon Van Etten. Today, we get to hear what Weyes Blood has done.

For the new episode of A Small Light, Natalie Mering takes on “When You’re Smiling,” a jazz standard that Larry Shay, Mark Fisher, and Joe Goodwin wrote in 1928. You know that song. It’s the “when you’re smiling, the whole world smiles with you” song. People like Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra recorded versions of “When You’re Smiling,” and Mel Torme sang it to Kramer on that one episode of Seinfeld. Este Haim produced the Weyes Blood version, and it’s soft and comforting, in a melancholy sort of way. Listen below.

The full A Small Light soundtrack is out 5/23.

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