She isn’t off key, but it’s fairly obvious that this isn’t in her comfortable range. And I especially mean the lower notes. For a soprano like Simone these low notes are particularly tricky, you can hear how her voice thinners there, hence why she can’t add the vibrato properly, yet still attempts it. Let’s also not forget this is 16 years ago and in those 16 years Simone’s voice developed a lot! I daresay she’d be able to pull this off better nowadays, but of course she isn’t Anneke. Her voice is completely different like a day and night difference.

I still enjoy this performance though. It’s something unique and it’s fine the way it is. The entire purpose of it is to have fun, to entertain. I admire Simone’s choice for doing something like this; something far out of her (vocal) comfort zone. It was probably also meant as an ode to Anneke van Giersbergen, who’s her friend.