In 1987, a UK perfume advert for Chanel No. 5 helped launch one of the most unlikely musical comebacks in jazz history. The soundtrack? A dusty, near-forgotten recording of “My Baby Just Cares for Me,” performed by Nina Simone more than three decades earlier.
The public loved it. The song re-entered the charts, the album sold in droves, and Simone’s name was suddenly everywhere again.
But there was one person who hadn’t been consulted about any of it: Nina Simone herself.
Back to the Beginning
Simone first recorded “My Baby Just Cares for Me” in 1957 for her debut album Little Girl Blue. It was never meant to be the focus — just another track on an album made under a modest contract.
She was paid a flat fee of $3,000 for the entire record. No royalties. No rights. No ownership.
The track sat quietly in the catalogue for decades. Simone had long moved on, both musically and emotionally. Her later work veered into protest songs, political statements, and orchestral arrangements — a far cry from the lighthearted swing of “My Baby Just Cares for Me.”
She rarely, if ever, performed it live again.
The Ad That Changed Everything
Fast forward to 1987.
Chanel released a stylised black-and-white television ad for their No. 5 perfume campaign in the UK. The soundtrack was Simone’s “My Baby Just Cares for Me.”
The advert struck a chord. Radio DJs started playing the song again. Record stores couldn’t keep up with demand. It hit the UK Top 5 and remained on the charts for weeks.
For many people hearing Nina Simone for the first time, this was the song that defined her.
But for Simone, it was more complicated.
No Say. No Pay.
Simone had no control over the licensing of the song. The rights belonged to the label, and she hadn’t received royalties for that 1957 recording in decades.
In interviews around the time, she didn’t dwell on the situation publicly, but she made her feelings clear in later years.
“I never wanted to sing that song,” she told an interviewer in 1990. “It was made at the very beginning of my career, and it’s not representative of me.”
Still, she recognised what it had become — not just a commercial hit, but a gateway for new audiences to discover her work.
She later included it on setlists again, this time on her own terms. In the early ’90s, she reportedly launched legal action against her former label, reaching an undisclosed settlement — finally reclaiming, in part, what the song had earned.
A Twisted Kind of Fame
The success of “My Baby Just Cares for Me” helped relaunch Simone’s commercial profile in Europe.
Concert promoters booked new shows. Her catalogue was reissued. Even audiences who didn’t know her civil rights anthems or classical roots could hum along to that now-famous piano riff.
In that sense, the advert changed everything.
But it also reminded Simone — and the industry — of something she had long fought against: the idea that artists, especially Black women in jazz, could be sidelined when it came to control and compensation.
Legacy in Two Parts
Today, “My Baby Just Cares for Me” is one of Simone’s most recognised recordings. But it was never meant to be. Not by her.
It’s a song she didn’t pick, didn’t profit from, and didn’t perform for most of her career.
And yet, it became the catalyst for a second wave of interest in her music. That’s the contradiction.
Nina Simone — the classically trained pianist, civil rights voice, and genre-defying icon — was reintroduced to the world through a perfume ad and a pop-jazz standard she had all but disowned.
The irony wasn’t lost on her.
But she knew how to reclaim space when she needed to. And when she sat down to play “My Baby Just Cares for Me” again on stage in the ‘90s, it wasn’t because the label told her to…
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You can dig deeper into the music of Nina Simone here, with our list of essential listening.