Aretha Franklin: the five albums you must own by the ‘Queen of Soul’ – R&B, soul, gospel and pop
From Laughing On the Outside, released in the 1960s, to the funky Who’s Zoomin’ Who? that came out in 1985, Franklin’s music resonated with fans from different generations
The multiple Grammy Awards winner had a stellar career that spanned six decades. If you don’t already own them, these are her five most significant albums:
Laughing on the Outside (1963)
With a seemingly arbitrary mix of pop, jazz and R&B tunes, Franklin’s early 1960s output on Columbia Records left audiences unsure about what kind of singer they were hearing. But nobody could doubt that a singer was what she was. Seek out this gem to behold the purity of her tone in Skylark and to marvel at the way she dismantles, then cleverly reassembles, the melody of Make Someone Happy.
I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967)
This was Franklin’s artistic breakthrough – and a landmark in American music. Recorded in part at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, this was the album that introduced the Queen of Soul in all her glorious complexity: a voice of passion and reason, heart and mind, impatience and understanding. “What you want,” she assured us, “baby, I got it.”
Amazing Grace (1972)
Even when she was singing about earthly love, Franklin maintained a strong connection to the church music with which she grew up. Still, few were prepared for the righteous fire of this live album recorded at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles.
Listen to How I Got Over to hear a pop star still invested in looking beyond herself.
Who’s Zoomin’ Who? (1985)
The ’80s were rough going for many singers from Franklin’s generation, especially those determined to stay on the charts. But Franklin sounds re-energised, not desperate, amid the glossy synths and mechanised drums of this big commercial hit.
“How’d you get your pants so tight?” she asks some dreamboat in the ebullient Freeway of Love, which is reason enough to ride with her.
Aretha Franklin Sings the Great Diva Classics (2014)
Franklin was famously competitive with other singers, and that drive hardly diminished as she got older. Here she stakes a claim to material made famous by Barbra Streisand (People), Gladys Knight (Midnight Train to Georgia), Alicia Keys (No One) and Adele, whose Rolling in the Deep she belts so hard you fear the thing might fall apart.
