NEW YORK
The title of Norah Jones’ new album, “Pick Me Up Off the Floor,” has two chief meanings.
After spending two years recording one-off monthly sessions, the piano-playing jazz-pop singer realized she had enough great songs piled up. “I didn’t know what was happening with them. I was sort of picking them up and putting them together. That was sort of the idea,” she said.
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The other meaning? It’s the extremely literal one: the songs were sad, and Jones needed a hand getting up.
“That feeling of desperation, when you just need somebody to pick you up, it was all of that,” she said.
Jones’ seventh album will be released Friday and though the 11-track album was written and recorded sporadically, it is a cohesive set that is personal and emotional, with song titles like “How I Weep,” “Hurts to Be Alone,” “Heartbroken, Day After” and “Stumble On My Way” to drive the point home.
“Then it whacks me straight into my stomach at night, it’s a hard blow to take with all of its might/It tries to be sorry, it tries to be sweet, then it runs out the door as if on two feet,” she sings on the opening track.
But Jones, 41, isn’t down and out the entire time — the album’s later songs, including “I’m Alive” and “To Live,” finish off with hopeful notes proving there is light at the end of the tunnel.
“I feel like there’s a lot on this album that is very personal ... I think I was sad when I wrote a lot of them, for sure, obviously,” said Jones, who added that the subjects of the songs came from one period of time in her life, though she didn’t say when that was.
Getting the sad songs out of her system was healing, she explained.
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