Aretha Franklin has released a new CD, So Damn Happy. Some trendsetters, including Rolling Stone's Barry Walters, say though listenable, this production pales in comparison to 1988's hip hop influenced effort.
The queen of soul is still the Queen. But that doesn't mean the material on Aretha Franklin's latest album is deserving of her crown. Last time around, on 1998's A Rose Is Still a Rose, Lauryn Hill, Puff Daddy and other hot hitmakers plied fresh beats and old-school samples to aim Aretha's R&B at young ears. Here, Mary J. Blige appears on and co-writes two of the hipper tracks, "Holdin' On" and "No Matter What," but both come up short in the melody, hook and rhythm departments, and those deficits afflict much of the rest. Ten different producers replace Rose's hip-hop energy with an adult-contemporary slickness that sometimes makes the sixty-one-year-old legend's voice seem shrill. Her Highness deserves more r-e-s-p-e-c-t than this.
Walters gave the album only two stars.
Jon Pareles of the New York Times amplifies Walter's criticism in a review of a recent concert in which Franklin reprised some of the songs that made her deservedly famous.
Aretha Franklin works by her own regal whims. On Saturday night at Radio City Music Hall, she operated in a realm far removed from most performers' attempts to please a crowd: a realm of long memory, odd caprices and ambivalence about the confines of pop. Listeners are welcome to admire the way her voice dives into sultriness, dodges the beat, cascades through long melismas or rushes heavenward. But where most soul and rhythm-and-blues turns listeners into a congregation, Ms. Franklin leaves them on the sidelines as spectators.
. . .The Baptist church music that Ms. Franklin grew up singing is never far from her best performances. She sat down at the piano to splash gospel tremolos in the title song of her new album, "So Damn Happy" (Arista), and in a version of "Dr. Feelgood" that was pure gospel music with earthy lyrics. She was joined by the Rev. Michael Jemison for the hymn "Precious Memories," and sang rings around him. Soon afterward, she topped "Freeway of Love" with a gospel reprise, shouting, "Jesus!"
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
Thanks MD, excellent roundup and interpretation. I have been concerned about the weight too - hate to lose her early to something preventable.