Aretha Franklin - 'Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics'

[copley]

Well I have just played all of Aretha’s new album and was far from impressed. Now I love Aretha and have all of her Columbia & Atlantic recordings. The only Arista one I have is ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who’. She’s now 72 so no one can expect her to sound like she did in her heyday. However there comes a time when every good singer should call it a day and Aretha’s time has come. Oh she’s not unlistenable like some I could mention but her higher register has gone but she will insist in reaching for those high notes and sounds like a seagull in pain! As you know the album is all cover versions of well known songs, well all bar one at least. I’d never heard of ‘No One’ by Alicia Keys before!

So let’s go back to the ‘60’s. Many of Aretha’s greatest hits were cover versions :- Respect/Natural Woman/I Say A Little Prayer/Bridge Over Troubled Water/Spanish Harlem/Don’t Play That Song/Eleanor Rigby/Satisfaction and many others. She made these songs her own although I can’t stand her version of ‘Prayer’! Sadly on her new album Aretha has not been able to work the same magic with perhaps the exception of the aforementioned Alicia Keys song which I didn’t know anyway. ‘I’m Every Woman’ still belongs to Chaka Khan even with it turning into ‘Respect’! ‘I Will Survive’ should be left only to Gloria and that includes Di’s dismal version. ‘People’, Teach Me Tonight’ & ‘At Last’ have all been done to death and Aretha adds nothing to them. The final nail in the coffin for me is her totally murderous version of the Prince penned Sinead O’Conner classic weepy ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’. Where Sinead under sings it with great depth of feeling that reduces me to tears Aretha has turned it into an up tempo big band swing version with scatterings of scat! I was reduced to tears of a different sort.

I would have loved to have loved this album but I just don’t. Aretha over sings, the backing of many tracks is just too loud, the whole album is over produced. Sorry Aretha, time to retire gracefully.

Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics track list.

1. "At Last" [[Etta James Cover)
2. "Rolling In The Deep" [[Adele Cover)
3. "Midnight Train To Georgia" [[Gladys Knight and The Pips Cover)
4. "I Will Survive" [[Gloria Gaynor Cover)
5. "People" [[Barbra Streisand Cover)
6. "No One" [[Alicia Keys Cover)
7. "I’m Every Woman" [[Chaka Khan Cover)
8. "Teach Me Tonight" [[Dinah Washington Cover)
9. "You Keep Me Hangin’ On" [[The Supremes Cover)
10. "Nothing Compares 2 U" [[Sinéad O’Connor Cover)