Aretha Franklin
This Girl's in Love With You

Aretha Franklin - This Girl's in Love with You

Bored, lying on the couch enjoying Ziggy's purring when I see my smartphone screen light up showing a Whatsapp notification. It's Domenico, the friend who gets me Japanese press vinyls. In the message preview, I manage to read: “Mauro, I found Aretha's album...”. In the moments it takes to access the app, I'm already savoring the moment I'll lay the vinyl on the turntable after many listens on Tidal: I've already experienced the thrilling feeling with “Lady Soul” and I know it will be the same, if not better.

I open the chat and see the cover: Aretha in a refined white dress, but it's not the one I'm looking for, it's the one critics consider Franklin's masterpiece: “I Never Loved A Man The Way That I Love You”.

Disappointed, I reply: no thank you. I know, I'm rejecting an essential album for a collection but, in my collection, I first need “This Girl's In Love With You”.

The one where Aretha, elegant but in another white mise, sits behind the piano: an image that iconically recalls the turning point in her career that began with her move to Atlantic in 1967, remembered by those present as: “Aretha, shy and reserved, said a few words but when she sat at the piano, the magic started.”

The one with that song, criticized for being too pop, it fills my eyes with tears every single time I listen to it, overturning my “Jungian Soul” like a sock: "Call me".

The one full of covers that, according to music gurus, don't do justice compared to the originals.

The one judged among the least successful of the remarkable Atlantic years' journey, which began in 1967 with “I Never Loved A Man The Way That I Love You” and includes, among others, “Lady Soul”, “Aretha Now”, and “Amazing Grace”.

Okay, maybe so, compared to these masterpieces it might be of lesser importance. But if it's not “Lobster & Champagne” it will be, at the very least, “Lobster & Franciacorta”!

It seems that the album was strongly wanted by Franklin herself who, recognizing the value of these young artists and the beauty of their songs, wanted to make them her own. Finally, this woman has the chance to manage her life and her career, and as the badass woman she is, she imposes her will on everyone, and about time too!

Badass woman, if there ever was one, for me it's her. Besides, my generation understood this miracle of nature seeing her reprimanding Jake and Elwood Blues to the notes of “Think”: hands on hips, proud look, and killer expression that eventually allows her husband (Matt Murphy) and the helper (Blue Lou) to join The Blues Brothers' reunion. In this role, she reminds me of my Aunt Jole from Catania, who is no longer with us, when as a child she would give me the thick glass bottle with a wire closure and send me to the corner kiosk to fill it with seltzer, salt, and lemon. The whole Via Dello Stadio knew I was Mrs. Jolanda's nephew, and I was proud of it! There was no trace of my uncle's manhood, more like a consort prince; the queen was her, my aunt with balls the size of blocks! I think few could imagine, given how she publicly treated her husband, that my errand was mainly to quench the beloved Giò's thirst because she loved him, oh how she loved him! It became clear to the whole Via Dello Stadio only the day he left her alone after almost seventy years together.

I grew up among strong women. My grandmother, widowed, who smashed brass and iron scrap with a mason's hammer. My mother, who, not having her sister Jole's firmness and determination, to assert her independence and wanting to reconcile it with the “duties” of a family mother, got what was then called a nervous breakdown. And I could go on...

I think, therefore, it's normal for my ideal woman to be strong, independent, self-aware, and self-sufficient. And if she decides to share her life and reluctantly give up a bit of independence, it's for intense passion and/or overwhelming love. Not out of respect for conventions, need, or anything else.

And we men, let's face it clearly, should kneel and ask forgiveness for at least seven thousand years to all the women in the world, badass or not. Just because nature made us physically stronger, we exploited this ability claiming to be superior beings. At best, demanding gratitude, respect, fidelity, care of the house and kids, silence, submission, … at worst, beating them to get what pleases us. Even the highly learned ancient Greeks considered women as inferior, to be confined to the gynaeceum. Over millennia, things have improved but remember that in Italy, the right to vote for women was recognized by decree on March 10, 1946 (nineteen hundred forty-six!) to understand that things are not okay. Not even today, in 2024!

And Franklin, stubborn probably became so “thanks” to the events that a woman, especially of color, in the '50s could “ordinarily” endure. At the age of 12, she became a mother for the first time to her son Clarence. A second child, Edward, followed two years later. Aretha didn't like to talk about these pregnancies, and in any case, words aren't needed to understand how things may have gone. But I’m not here to tell you Franklin's biography or her role in the so-called “feminist cause”.

Rather, what I can say is: what do you do when it's time to record another album and you're the one who already has 15 studio albums under her belt, at the peak of your career and acclaimed as the greatest singer of your generation? Even if others might think there's nothing more to prove, there are still one or two things that - as a determined and tenacious woman - you might want to validate. For example: who really is the "Queen of Soul" and the fact that when you choose a song, it becomes yours.

And what songs does she choose? Little things, like: “Let It Be” (the first release of the great classic is by Aretha herself, to whom Paul McCartney sent a demo so that the iconoclastic American singer could get an idea before the Beatles' release), “Eleanor Rigby”, “Son Of A Preacher Man”, “The Weight”. Even the title-track is a cover of Herb Alpert’s “This Guy's in Love with You”. Not only that, “It Ain't Fair” had already been released by Ben E. King two years earlier, “Share Your Love with Me” was originally recorded in 1963 by blues singer Bobby Blue Bland, “The Dark End of the Street" was already known to the public through James Carr's 1967 rendition, and “Sit Down And Cry” - which might seem like an original - had been previously sung by underground soul legend Jean Wells.

As mentioned, critics mostly hammered the covers of Beatles, Bacharach/Springfield, and The Band pointing out - in their view - the inappropriateness of the R&B treatment with strong gospel veins given to them.

For me, after 54 years, rather than rankings and distinctions, I enjoy these historical songs performed and sung at stellar levels because, accompanying Aretha, we find the rhythm section of the Muscle Shoals Studios with Duane Allman on slide guitar. Just an anecdote: “Son Of A Preacher Man” was initially written for Aretha, a preacher's daughter, and then given to Springfield to launch her career: seems it worked!

On the R&B and soul “standards”, what can I say: take, for example, "It Ain't Fair" which in my opinion is the best solitary anthem ever sung (except for Tom Waits!). But the other ones are wonderful songs too, which have the merit of not being overexposed like other equally beautiful but much more well-known tracks.

Essentially, the only original track is “Call me” written by Aretha herself. Here Franklin has no mercy: she slips her hand through the ribs reaching the heart and squeezes until the heart ventricles burst. Maybe because, for seven years, airport goodbyes have become a cliché but every time I listen to it, I undergo heart surgery.

Aretha indeed wrote “Call Me” after hearing two lovers speak on a street in New York City and was so struck by the emotion with which one of them uttered “call me (when you arrive)” that she took the words to make the title of a song with a simple and straightforward lyric. A touching story, of lovers soon to be parted but who will carry their passion in their hearts, wherever they are.

But, as beautiful as it is in its minimalism capable of turning a detail into poetry, it’s not the lyrics that make the song memorable, but the interpretation. Because, in my view, it’s not her technique that has literally enchanted everyone or her ability to sing above an octave that makes Aretha the greatest singer of all time, but rather her interpretative skills. Her performances are never calculated, but stem from the desire to give voice to her soul. At Atlantic, they understood that the only way for Franklin to achieve sublime performances is to let her sing as she wishes without saying anything, without interrupting her. And after three successful years, they gladly let her do exactly that! Those powerful notes, capable of immediately stripping paint off a gate, unexpected and at seemingly inopportune moments in a song, just like the low tones, are the moments Aretha shows she is not simply a singer but, above all, a human creature who suffers and rejoices through her singing. The deep melancholy, the legacy of the events of a not easy life, allowed her to load her performances with her fears, her guilt, and her moments of joy, always sudden and spontaneous. For me, only a badass woman knows how to love and sing about love with this passion.

A Sam: that girl in love with me.