Editing Billie Holiday (section)

== Strange Fruit ==

Holiday's 1939 recording of "Strange Fruit," a protest song about lynching, marked a turning point in both her career and popular music's engagement with social issues. The song's graphic imagery—"Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze"—challenged listeners with a directness unprecedented in popular music. Columbia Records refused to release it, so Holiday recorded it for the independent Commodore label, where it became a modest hit while establishing her as an artist willing to use her platform for social commentary.<ref name="nicholson"/>

"Strange Fruit" demonstrated Holiday's ability to inhabit a song's emotional content completely, her performance conveying grief, anger, and accusation through purely musical means. The recording influenced subsequent generations of artists who sought to address social issues through popular music, from Nina Simone to contemporary hip-hop artists. Holiday's willingness to sing "Strange Fruit" despite threats and commercial pressures revealed courage that the entertainment industry's exploitation of her persona often obscured.<ref name="blackburn"/>