In the mid-1990s Aretha seemed to have settled into the back end of her career, mediocre albums were followed by lazy and disappointing concerts. You know the sort, where the artist comes out for a half an hour, disappears for half an hour and then finish it off with half an hour plus a ten minute encore. The singing was triumphant but indolent and all seemed to heading for “Freeway of Love”.
But sometime in the past two years, Aretha began to turn it around, I think she started thinking about her collaborations with Curtis Mayfield and it went some way to settling her down. During a set some five years ago she ended up tributing Mayfield with three songs and it lifted the entire set to another level.
Last time I saw Aretha was the day after her Goddaughter Whitney Houston had died and so I just feel it was such a special occasion, a Gospel based evening filled with songs of praise and remembrance , that it can’t really be compared to anything very much, that it is a standard I couldn’t hold Aretha to.
But it effected my thought process when it came to going again next Friday; you can’t go home again and I just knew she had no choice but to disappoint. But in the end it is the Queen Of Soul. Ella and Billie are long gone, who else do we have the compare with this soulful, strident, wonderful singer.
Aretha isn’t just the voice of freedom, or women rights, but more, when she is covering a song like “Sparkle” she seems to be the voice of love and passion. Aretha, similar to Sinatra and maybe Ronstadt, improves a song simply her singing it; she makes average stuff (actually, she does this too often) sound like minor classics. “A Rose Is still A Rose” any one.
So maybe it won’t be the best concert I’ll ever see by Aretha, but it will be Mid January (the 17 th) and a Friday and Radio City Music Hall and the Queen Of Soul. Sounds like a must see to me.