1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 111. Aretha Franklin – Lady Soul (1968)

I think on the last Aretha Franklin album I said that she set the bar for all other female soul vocalists to aspire to. Here, I think she takes that bar and puts it just a little bit further out of reach (contemporaneously, though, I’d say RAYE and Lady Blackbird are taking it turns to vault over that bar). Overall this album is bit more funky than the last one, with more energetic and fewer soulful tracks, such as the glorious Chain of Fools or the lively Niki Hoeky. That’s not to say that there aren’t some slow numbers as well, not least of which is a cover of People Get Ready, but the gold standard from this album has to be the soaring Goffin-King composition You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman. I want to know what that walk down the stairs of the scale is called in music theory – I wanted to say it’s “treppe”, but came up short. Anyway. That.

You

        Make

                     Me

                             Feel

                                        Like

                                                   A

                                                        Natural

                                                                            Woman

There’s a good groove to the final track Ain’t No Way, featuring backing vocals by one Cissy “Mother of Whitney” Houston, and Eric Clapton pops up on guitar somewhere on the album too.

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