Fuck Yeah, Aretha Franklin

Can I just talk about this cover for a minute?

There was something about some of Aretha’s album covers during this time that took away any of the polished gleaming smiles and poses that were showcased on Aretha’s Columbia album covers. Something deep, dark, depressing and sad about Aretha’s look as if she was struggling to find her way out of a crazy situation and that situation was possibly with her abusive first husband, Ted White. Like her fellow contemporary, Tina Turner, she had to deal with an abusive man that didn’t really respect her and in some of her most cherished compositions, which Aretha later wrote in her memoirs, were sometimes forced upon her to write in a holed room by White who then bullied his way into composition credit though he was reportedly illiterate. It don’t take a rocket scientist to note that from the cover and from most of the content in the songs, this is a woman who was crying out for help in the most chaotic way possible. But in her pain came this beautiful music that more than 40 years later still holds up. And that may be why people still love Aretha in spite of her chameleon-like changes of styles over the years.

the greatest singer of all-time