Of course, Carey’s place in the music record books is more than secure. She has spent more weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 than any other artist (91) and has more #1 singles than any other solo artist (19). Her albums have been certified for a total of 74 million units by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), making her the top-ranking woman, and second to only Michael Jackson among Black artists. It’s only natural that, for most of her career, Carey surely felt pressure to succeed as a hitmaker.

“When ‘Caution’ finally came, at that point in her career there was nothing else for her to prove,” says Princess Gabbara, an entertainment journalist, editor, and author whose writing has appeared in ESSENCE, Vibe, MTV News, and Billboard, where she interviewed Carey.

“She was able to create music for fun again, just for herself and the people who appreciate it most: her fans.”

Released after a tumultuous period both personally and professionally, Carey was a woman liberated on “Caution.” No longer confined by commercial expectations, she commanded the respect she deserved and earned. Carey, seemingly more comfortable and sure of herself than ever, returned to the studio in early 2018 to begin the recording sessions that would compose “Caution.”

“The studio is such a safe place for me, the right environment,” Carey told Rob Markman during her “Genius Level” interview. “I had been outside of that environment for too long and doing too many superfluous things that I really didn’t need to be doing.”

Over the four and a half years between “Caution” and 2014’s “Me. I Am Mariah… The Elusive Chanteuse,” Carey indeed had a lot going on. She got divorced, engaged, and then broke it off. She changed managers a few times, went on three tours, had two Las Vegas residencies, produced a cringe-worthy reality TV show… and then there was the New Year’s Eve 2017 debacle. However, she kicked off 2018 by returning to the very same stage, vindicating herself with a stellar performance. 

Later that year, she disclosed that she’s battled bipolar disorder since 2001, saying she could no longer “live in constant fear” of someone exposing her (spoiler alert: someone was about to do so). In an exclusive interview with People, Carey admitted, “​​I sought and received treatment, I put positive people around me and I got back to doing what I love — writing songs and making music.” Seven months later, she released “Caution.”

“’Caution’ is a return to her creative prowess because all of the negative drama was gone, and she could just create with no distraction,” says Gabbara. 

During her “Genius Level” interview, Carey also spoke on the creative process behind the album: “I really wanted to collaborate. One of my favorite things to do is collaborate and go back and forth…I did a lot of that on this record.”

That she did. “Caution” found Carey collaborating with an array of producers and songwriters, most of whom she had never worked with before. The result was an impressively fresh, modern R&B album. Teaming up with trusted names like Timbaland, No ID, Shea Taylor, Poo Bear, Bibi Bourelly, DJ Mustard, Nineteen85, and The Stereotypes, Carey masterfully combined contemporary R&B styles with her signature, crossover sensibilities. She also worked with less predictable collaborators, such as EDM producer Skrillex and, most notably, Dev Hynes of Blood Orange. Though each of the album’s ten tracks pairs Carey with a different set of co-producers, they mesh perfectly.

“It’s one of her most cohesive albums,” says Taylor Gray, indie R&B artist and playlist curator. “She was able to fuse many different sounds and collaborators and it worked seamlessly. It was very forward-thinking for Mariah … a little more alternative in certain elements.”

One of the album’s most “alternative” sounding tracks is “Giving Me Life.” Penned by Carey and Hynes, with a guest verse from Hip-Hop legend Slick Rick, the track is like nothing Carey has ever recorded, yet still manages to sound unmistakably her own. 

“I think her collaboration with Blood Orange is an indication of the future for her,” says Andrew Chan, author of “Why Mariah Carey Matters,” a book critically examining Carey’s legacy. “The whole weird psychedelic outro that she does, it’s just fantastic.”

Praise for “Caution” is not limited to Gabbara, Chan, or Gray. On Metacritic, a website that creates an aggregate score for albums based on published reviews, the album has a score of 82 based on nine reviews, which they note as “universal acclaim.”

“She started to finally receive a lot of her flowers,” says Gabbara. “It felt like a full-circle moment. Not only the fans, but the critics recognized that too.” 

Critics were definitely impressed. In Entertainment Weekly, Leah Greenblatt wrote, “On … the breezy, pleasingly defiant ‘Caution,’ she finds a freshness that’s been missing from her recent material.” Similarly, in the Pitchfork review by Maura Johnston, she noted that Carey employs “of-the-moment producers to add current touches to her tracks, but the way she uses them on ‘Caution’ results in her fine-tuning her aesthetic, not bending to current playlist-friendly trends.”

For Spin, Winston Cook-Wilson gave Carey, and “Caution,” high praise: “More than just a sound effect, “Mariah Carey”-ness is a style and an attitude, a mode in which so many artists continue to make music. On ‘Caution,’ she is still doing it better than most of her students, and sounds more comfortable than she has in quite a while.”

Chan, too, notes that this album marked a shift in how critics wrote about Carey, but he also attributes that to a change in demographics among critics: “Things change when more people of color start writing about music; when more queer people start writing about music. Much of the music criticism was controlled by a certain type of straight white man who really had no interest in what Mariah or a lot of other black women were bringing to the table musically.” 

“It also says something about how Mariah’s legacy has solidified,“ he adds.

While Carey is famously averse to acknowledging time, the album was released 28 years into her career, on the cusp of her fourth decade in the industry. At 54, Carey is far from retirement but is certainly a veteran, a “legacy act” – which comes with good and bad elements. Due to ageism (and slightly confusing single choices), the album barely made a dent, commercially. However, its critical acclaim and subsequent celebrations of her legacy that followed “Caution” show that Carey is beginning to receive the respect that an artist of her caliber deserves.

“People started to realize we need to appreciate our living legends while we have them,” says Gabbara.

Since “Caution” was released, Carey herself has made several conscious decisions to celebrate her legacy and catalog. While she may opt to refer to them as minutes and not years, she celebrated the 25th Anniversary of iconic albums “Daydream,” and “Butterfly,” the 30th Anniversary of “Music Box,” and her entire career with a campaign called “#MC30.” In 2020, she also released her first memoir, “The Meaning of Mariah Carey,” alongside an album of unreleased songs “from the vault,” titled “The Rarities.” 

Each of these events was met with celebration from fans and critics alike, perhaps contributing to the snowballing success of Carey’s evergreen classic “All I Want For Christmas Is You,” which, after notching its first week at #1 in 2019, has only grown more popular. With it, Carey’s profile as the “Queen of Christmas” continues to elevate. 

This year, her “It’s Time” video announcing the start of the holiday Mariah season became the most-watched video on Twitter (X), with over 122 million views. On TikTok, it has over 93 million. Currently, Carey is on tour spreading Christmas cheer with a setlist that includes holiday favorites, as well as some of her biggest hits and fan favorites. Just in time to celebrate its 5th anniversary, there’s even a “Caution” cut included, the Lil’ Kim-sampling gem that should’ve been its lead single: “A No No.” 

As she continues to release (GRAMMY-nominated) special editions of her classic albums and trek around the world each Christmas as obligated by The Crown, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Mariah Carey is no longer shying away from reminding us that while she may be the Queen of Christmas, she is not just the Christmas lady. Following the acclaim she received for “Caution,” Carey has definitely seemed more emboldened and aware of her worth. 

“I think maybe there is something that happens with artists who just don’t get any critical respect,” says Chan. “It’s almost like you feel shy about praising yourself or putting yourself forward as a major musician, maybe because you’ve never been made to feel that by people who have respected positions and can judge that. Once you have a sense of how influential you are and it’s being acknowledged in the press, I can understand how that would make you go back and reflect on what your contribution has been over decades.”

In celebration of the album’s release, Sony Music installed an exhibition called “The Mariah Carey Experience” at Sony Square in New York City. With different photo booths that allowed fans to recreate a couple of her iconic album covers, a museum-style display of her #1 hits and memorable ensembles, and of course a Christmas moment, it simultaneously placed her legacy front and center alongside her then-new album.

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Before landing on “Caution,” Carey originally planned to title the album after a different track, the reflective ballad “Portrait.” A tradition at this point, she bares all on the dramatically introspective album closer. She sings, “I won’t let the teardrops spill tonight/ Just conceal myself and hide/ This portrait of my life.” Dripping in insecurity, “Portrait” illustrates a woman fighting to survive, remaining resilient (“down but not demoralized”), but in shame (“how do I disappear?”).

The last song recorded for the album, “Caution,” became the album’s title track instead. A wise choice, from both a stylistic (the song is more representative of the set, sonically) and marketing (the artwork and other caution-taped theme promo materials were really cool) standpoint. However, maybe unconsciously, “Caution” paints the picture of a much different woman in comparison to “Portrait.” On the slinky, Caribbean-inspired groove, Carey confidently sings, “Proceed with caution, but don’t make me wait/ Before too long, it just might fade away.” 

While yes, the song is about a new relationship, perhaps as an album title it was metaphorical. “Caution,” the album, was a catalyst; it was Mariah Carey putting the world on notice. She demanded respect as an artist, and releasing a damn good body of work was the most effective form of statement to make her case.

Recently, Carey announced that she’s back in the studio working on her next album – the follow-up to “Caution” that fans have been eagerly anticipating. Indeed, “it’s time.”

Revisit “Caution” by Mariah Carey

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It All Started With a Purr.

Not quite the kind of vocal purr that Eartha Kitt famously once possessed. This purr was vastly different: vaguely androgynous, with a fry that would horrify most experienced vocal coaches, yet intrinsically worked for her. The purr was deep. One now disgraced singer once facetiously quipped that the owner sounded like “the female Elvis.” This proved to be untrue, as the purr was strangely feminine and unmistakably seductive, yet tinged with an innate and sometimes guttural hint of pain. It was deceptive, mostly coming from the proverbial “basement” of the owner’s register, while seemingly out of nowhere, reaching a falsetto a singer like that rarely has in their wheelhouse.

Church Girl

When the owner of this vocal purr, a diminutive 25-year-old woman hailing from Severn, Maryland, linked up with pioneering singer-songwriter Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds, what resulted was not only one of the most enduring musical partnerships of all time but one of the greatest debut albums the world has ever seen. In July 1993, Toni Michele Braxton arrived and proved she was here to stay.

By the time her self-titled debut album dropped, Toni Braxton up until that point had lived a life that was a far cry from the glitz and glamor of Hollywood. Born the first of six children, Braxton had grown up with the strict religious teachings of her clergyman father, and under the restrictive tutelage of her mother. She’d known minimal success previously, as along with her four sisters, she served as the lead singer of the original incarnation of the R&B group, The Braxtons. While it was obvious that the sisters were talented to varying degrees, it was Toni who was the unmistakable star.

A “Musical Marriage”

By 1993, Kenneth Edmonds and L.A. Reid had found a way to exploit their new star’s talents in the best way possible. It began of course, with the music. Recording of the album began just under a year earlier in Atlanta, where by that point, Braxton had already recorded her duet with Edmonds, “Give U My Heart” and her first solo single “Love Shoulda Brought You Home”, both for the soundtrack to the 1992 film, Boomerang. Love as it turned out, would be the album’s center-point, as the work perfectly embodies the ebbs and flows of relationships. We take a seamless journey throughout a love story in its different phases.

With a relatable ear, we journey with Braxton as she girlishly describes “the honeymoon phase” in tracks such as “How Many Ways” (Shemar Moore, anyone?), “Best Friend,” “I Belong To You” and “Candlelight.” We feel through her the emotional uncertainty during rougher times with “You Mean The World To Me.” We even condoned more immoral behavior from Toni, as she coyly entertains the thought of infidelity in “Love Affair,” just because it was so damn sexy. Come on, when she sings the line, “I have a boyfrieeeennnd!” you can’t tell me that you didn’t want her to choose chaos, and cheat!

The Boomerang Effect

There is a strong chance that you’ve seen your mamas or your aunties recreating the famous scene in Boomerang, in which Halle Berry’s Angela “muffs” Eddie Murphy’s Marcus in the forehead, while cooly saying, “Loooove, shoulda brought your ass HOME last night!” – an obvious reference and evidence of the aforementioned track’s impact. Continuing that wave of accountability, the track “Seven Whole Days” sees Braxton sassing her man ALL the way together. Flanked by her younger sisters (R.I.P. Tracie), this visual is easily my favorite of the era. By the time we reach the stage of full-on heartache with songs like “Another Sad Love Song” (one of my absolute favorite songs of all time), and “Breathe Again,” we’ve run the whole emotional gamut that one can expect in a romantic relationship.

Living Legend

With one stroke of the proverbial wands of Babyface and L.A. Reid, Toni “Living Legend” Braxton had arrived. By shedding her homely Maryland aesthetic – repackaged as a tantalizing, lovesick R&B goddess – she easily stood toe-to-toe with her admitted influences of Anita Baker and Sade. With the sensual stage presence of a 1940s torch singer, Braxton quickly developed a sex appeal that rivaled her contemporaries Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Whitney Houston.

Donning her iconic pixie cut, denim jeans, bold red lipstick, and black leather jacket on the album’s cover, Braxton would go on to shift not only what an R&B diva looks like, but would shatter the whole notion of what one is. Toni Braxton’s debut album, which would go on to nab her three GRAMMYs including one for Best New Artist, easily rendered the newcomer as one of the most commercially viable artists of the 1990s. The little plain girl from Severn, Maryland with the funny purr in her voice went on to become a living legend because she has one of the most distinguishable voices of all time.

Listen to or purchase Toni Braxton’s debut album

The post Big Purr: The Debut of Toni Braxton appeared first on THE 97.

A year or two before the album dropped, my dad joined Sam Goody’s rewards program Replay because I basically lived at our town’s Sam Goody by that point. Joining the program included a subscription to their members’ magazine, Request, which I reasonably devoured each month. As I thumbed through the June 2002 issue, Anastacia’s photo caught my eye. Accompanying the photo was a blurb about her new album Freak of Nature. I was immediately taken by the writer’s audacious comparison of Anastacia’s voice to that of my idol, Aretha Franklin. They name checked the album’s lead single “One Day In Your Life” and within 10 minutes I was in the basement on the computer I shared with my sister downloading the song on Kazaa. I was hooked from the first listen, and days later was at Circuit City buying my copy of Freak of Nature.

“One Day In Your Life” begins slowly; The first verse lands on top of a building arrangement that gives way to the song’s big, driving hook. It’s a tenacious record that kisses off a detached lover in a fashion that is reminiscent of Mariah Carey’s “Someday.” She swirls with heartbreak, but is also confident in her convictions that he’ll come around. It’s driving, with an emphasis on the keyboard and synthesizers, giving it a funky, Euro feel. 

In the U.S. it was the album’s lead single and though it didn’t make any waves on the pop charts, it did top the Billboard Dance chart. “One Day In Your Life” is one of three songs on Freak Of Nature that was remixed for the U.S. market. The original version was produced by Sam Watters and Louis Biancaniello, who co-wrote the song with Anastacia. The duo handled a bulk of co-writing and production duties on both Freak of Nature and Anastacia’s 2000 debut Not That Kind. 

The US version was produced by Wake, which retains all the vocals but replaces most of other parts of the track. What was a funky, Euro club track became a pop-rock track. Keyboards  became electric guitars to cater to the U.S.’ rock-leaning pop market. Both are stellar, but the original version resonates more and better fits Anastacia’s sonic profile. Because the song wasn’t widely released in the U.S. and I was downloading before the album dropped, the version I downloaded on Kazaa was the original, international version. It took me years before I understood the difference. I sensed it when I listened, but I just figured some Kazaa user doing their own thing to augment the version I’d downloaded. I still prefer that international version.

Anastacia’s voice sounds like something you might expect to hear from a drag queen, because despite it’s clear femininity, it has some masculinity in its depth and tone, which is combined with a nasally quality. Make no mistake, her voice is massive. It has just the right amount of grit and rasp, but also can soar to stupendous heights. Her voice recalls Taylor Dayne, but Anastacia’s is more intense and has a greater emphasis on her head voice. It’s one of the most versatile voices in contemporary music. In the years since her debut she’s demonstrated a unique ability to seamlessly move between genres. She can command the dance floor with a pulsing uptempo, compete with big-voiced balladeers, and go toe-to-toe with rock royalty. 

On Freak of Nature though, she focused her energy on being a funky diva with a voice big enough to conquer Celiné Dion-level ballads. She’d already begun laying this foundation on her 2000 debut Not That Kind, which included her most successful U.S. single “I’m Outta Love,” which can still be heart at the club on the right night. Her style was quirky: sunglasses became a trademark, and she bounced around stage in belly shirts, leather pants, platform boots, and the occasional oversized hat. As a closeted gay boy, her style showed me a lot of things I wanted (I still need some of those belly shirts). She was also knocking 8 years off her age at the time, succumbing to the sexist industry pressure for women to be young.

The album opens with the title cut and an impression of a New York Puerto Rican accent that has certainly aged poorly, to say the very least. Introduction aside, it’s a strong opening cut where she leans into her unique voice and personality, which initially hindered her ability to get a record deal. The song represents her owning her shit and spinning it into gold. 

Ric Wake, who produced a third of Not That Kind (and, coincidentally, Taylor Dayne’s early work), returned to take the lead on the album’s production. Remix aficionado Richie Jones joined Wake on most of his contributions. Sam Watters and Louis Biancaniello of The Runawayz cover most of the other tracks. Together they threaded together an eclectic mix of funk, pop ballads, and in the US market, touches of pop-rock. 

Second cut (and lead single) “Paid My Dues” oozes with resilience as she details the trials and tribulations she faced in her quest for success. “So like I told you, you cannot stop me,” she declares, between verses. It’s a powerful cut that serves as a vessel for her soaring vocal capacity. It’s more of a power ballad with funk undertones (featuring thick keyboards that recur throughout the album). It also proved to be the album’s most successful track, topping half a dozen international charts. 

The album’s two big ballads hit both sides of the Celine Dion coin. “You’ll Never Be Alone” is an inspirational record with an abstract subject, in the tradition of records like “Hero,” “When You Believe,” and of course the similarly titled “You Are Not Alone.”  It has a big, dramatic climax that lets Anastacia show off the full breadth of her voice. The other is the adoring, acoustic closer “I Dreamed You.” It dials back the fireworks and lets Anastacia shine over a stripped back arrangement, akin to some of the ballads from Not That Kind. 

The second half of the album also features two songs which were not new for U.S. listeners. “Why’d You Lie To Me” and “Don’tcha Wanna” were included on the U.S. release of Not That Kind and unapologetically reappear here. “Why’d You Lie To Me,” with hard acoustic guitar strums and effervescent synths is not far from the sounds of Destiny’s Child and TLC at the time. It was the album’s fourth international single, and is one of the most unique cuts because of its contemporary R&B-driven sound. I gravitated towards the song early on, and the artwork of the CD single, which I stumbled on a year and a half after the album came out in the US. 

“Don’tcha Wanna” cuts 17 seconds of fade-out from the version that appeared on the U.S. edition of Not That Kind. The song contains the only sample on the album, a prime cut of the breakdown from Stevie Wonder’s “I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever).” The sample moves sensually as Anastacia prowls towards her target. It fits the funky motif of the album perfectly, and hey, let’s be honest, not everybody can rock a Stevie sample like that.

In a strange and seemingly contrary move, the U.S. version plopped one new song into the middle of the album. “I Thought I Told You That” is a very middle of the road pop record, with both funk and rock elements in the arrangement. The record is an indictment of a cheating man, more topically in the vein of Whitney Houston and Deborah Cox’s 2000 “Same Script, Different Cast” than Brandy and Monica’s classic “The Boy Is Mine.” But while both of those songs pitted the protagonists against each other, this one finds them uniting to decry the cheater. 

What made the song particularly unique is that it landed Anastacia the only feature on the album: Faith Evans. She judged Anastacia on MTV’s The Cut in 1998 and offered her some “encouraging words,” according to Anastacia’s thank you’s in the liner notes. Anastacia does most of the heavy lifting on the verses and blends to the backgrounds to let Faith take the lead on the choruses and bridge. It’s a solid, albeit perplexing collaboration that didn’t get the attention it warranted. 

As if all the musical changes weren’t enough, the U.S. version of Freak Of Nature even featured a slightly different shot for the album cover. The U.S. cover shot features a more sensual pose that accentuates her breasts more than the original cover. Sex sells, and the label was intent on putting her chest on the market. 

They tried, and boy did they try hard to make Anastacia work in the US. She made her formal US debut (after two singing cameos on Ally McBeal) duetting with Celiné Dion on the opening number of 2002’s VH1 Divas Las Vegas. She performed on The Tonight Show, The View, Regis and Kelly, The Late Late Show, Good Morning America, and sang the National Anthem at the MLB All-Star Game. In late 2002 she even landed on the Grammy Award winning soundtrack to the film Chicago. “Love Is A Crime” played during the film’s end credits, and would have been heavily promoted had Anastacia not been diagnosed with breast cancer in January 2003 (she famously filmed the song’s music video that month with a 104 degree fever). Nothing took, and aside from “One Day In Your Life”’s success on the dance chart, Freak of Nature floundered in the United States. Twenty years later it remains her most recent album to be physically released in the United States, much to this fan’s frustration. 

Overseas Freak Of Nature was a star-solidifier for Anastacia, but she was on the precipice of an even biggest moment in her career. A 2003 battle with breast cancer proved to be a blessing in disguise, inspiring her third album Anastacia, which moved away from funk and into a blend of soul, pop, and rock that she termed “sprock.” The album was massive, debuting at number one in almost a dozen countries and landing at number 2 on the European Year-End chart for 2004 (behind Norah Jones). Future albums would delve more pointedly into both pop and rock, but the funk she forged on Not That Kind and Freak of Nature continue to be her unshakable foundation, and a crucial element of her catalog and her 20-plus year career. 

Listen to both versions of Freak of Nature on Spotify:

U.S. Version:

Deluxe International Version:

The post Anastacia’s Freak Of Nature Was A Turning Point appeared first on THE 97.

“As America moved deeper into its love affair with disco, my sales stayed slightly off,” Aretha Franklin said of her mid-late 70’s slump. By 1977, the fusion of pop, gospel, and blues known as R&B that Aretha Franklin forged and drove to the top of the charts a decade earlier no longer had the chart dominance it did in the early 1970’s. In its place was a mix of genres and subgenres that were thrusted ahead by the beat. Funk and disco were dominating, and Aretha was struggling to find her place in the mix. 

With Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, and Tom Dowd at the boards, Aretha forged a winning musical partnership that lasted from 1967 through 1972. In 1973 she branched out and worked with the brilliant Quincy Jones. The resulting work was a pretty, albeit lopsided and strangely presented album, Hey Now Hey (The Other Side Of The Sky) (seriously, have you ever seen the album cover?). Her return to Wexler and co. that year only resulted in one more timeless record, 1974’s “Until You Come Back To Me (That’s What I’m Gonna Do),” penned by Stevie Wonder. The old team made three albums together in 1974 and 1975 that failed to recapture the magic of years passed, so Aretha moved on. 

In 1976 Aretha partnered with Curtis Mayfield for the incredible Sparkle, which momentarily restored her to the summit she once occupied. Aretha hadn’t seen that level of success since nearly a half decade earlier, and was determined to sustain her resurgence. She kicked off 1977 on a high note, performing as part of President Jimmy Carter’s inauguration celebration. Her performance culminated in a chill-inducing acapella rendition of “God Bless America.” In an attempt to keep the momentum going, she shifted producers once again and enlisted Motown legend Lamont Dozier to produce her next LP. 

Dozier’s credits as part of songwriting and production trio Holland-Dozier-Holland speak for themselves: “Heat Wave.” “Where Did Our Love Go?” “Baby Love.” “Come See About Me.” “Stop! In The Name Of Love.” “Nowhere To Run.” “I Hear A Symphony.” “This Old Heart Of Mine.” “My World Is Empty Without You.” “You Can’t Hurry Love.” “You Keep Me Hangin’ On.” “Reflections.” “Give Me Just A Little More Time.” “Band Of Gold.” By 1976, Dozier was in a similar position to Aretha; His relationships with the Hollands and Motown were fractured, and he was in need of his own resurgence.

Slump aside, with a resume like that, who could resist such an opportunity? Not the Queen of Soul. Plus, the two had history dating back to their youth. “Aretha and I went to school together in Detroit, Hutchins Junior High.” Dozier revealed to Billboard in 2018. When Aretha reached out to Dozier, he quickly agreed to produce her next LP and the duo got to work. They brought their own compositions to the table, along with a cover or two, as well as one record that didn’t involve Dozier at all. The resulting album was 1977’s Sweet Passion. There’s some fine material that was received variably by critics, but it failed to continue the fire ignited with Curtis Mayfield the previous year. 

Unlike the sibling rivalry that prefaced the Sparkle sessions (another story for another day), or tension that existed during the Almighty Fire sessions, the album’s recording sessions reportedly went over without conflict. “She was probably the easiest act I ever had in the studio as far as directing… She made my job easy.” Dozier said.  “She just had a natural talent, and you didn’t have to direct her; She directed herself, mostly, and if there was something you wanted to hear she’d do it automatically and then had her own interpretation or her riff on whatever you wanted her to do, as far as the feeling was concerned.” 

Interestingly, the album’s lead single was outsourced. “Break It To Me Gently” was written and produced by Marvin Hamlisch and Carole Bayer Sager and co-produced by Marty Paich and his son David, who formed a little band called Toto that same year. The structure of the song is interesting, with a psychedelic introduction, sweet strings, and randomly emphasized chords throughout. “Why’d you give me what you knew I would miss?” Aretha laments as she pleads to be let down gently. She suggests tomorrow instead of now, in hopes that in time, he’ll change his mind. Though it didn’t have any staying power, “Break It To My Gently” did top the R&B charts in 1977. 

Despite her aversion to disco, she takes another stab at it on “Touch Me Up” (there was another earlier attempt on 1974’s “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”) It’s a lively blend of brass and piano on top of a driving beat, and probably could have done some damage on the charts had it been released. She finds beauty and love on her own composition, the effervescent “Meadows of Springtime,” and proclaims superior devotion on Dozier’s “No One Could Ever Love You More.”  

Her cover of “What I Did For Love” from ‘A Chorus Line’ is another strong entry. Though in context of the show the ‘love’ sung about is dance, Aretha takes that and turns it into romantic love for another. She sprinkles in a “you” or two as she stakes her claim for all she’s done in the name of l-o-v-e. It’s a gorgeous reading of this Broadway classic. 

The 7-minute title track features nearly two minutes of an introduction. It defies the standard structure of a pop-oriented record, as does “Meadows of Springtime.” Aretha had previously experimented with song structures on the still-unreleased “Springtime In New York,” from the mid-70’s. That record is a complete rollercoaster ride of tempos, instrumentations, and moments in general. “Sweet Passion” isn’t that scattered, once the introduction cedes to the first verse, it maintains a largely standard, albeit extended structure. 

“There comes a time in every woman’s life… when she meets… that special someone,” Aretha says during “Sweet Passion”’s opening stanzas. “And he makes her feel, like a woman… ow!” Who knew she was telling her own future? In the months leading up to the album’s release, Aretha connected with Glynn Turman, who would soon become her second husband in 1978. “Sweet Passion” isn’t about Glynn, but Aretha was certainly looking for her man. She had recently ended a long-term relationship with Ken Cunningham that dated back to the late 60’s. 

“Sweet Passion” was inspired by a different man, one whose identity remains unknown. Aretha referred to him as ‘Mr. Mystique’ in her 1999 autobiography, Aretha: From These Roots. She said she was moved to write the song after their first ‘real’ encounter. The man had missed his plane in New York and what followed was Aretha being “kissed, touched (and) loved” in a way that she’d never experienced before. They met at a hotel and got a room, something she’d never done either. 

The true gem of Sweet Passion is one of the compositions Aretha brought to the table. “When I Think About You” is a mid-tempo that hits all the right notes. It’s 70’s R&B at its finest, with an infectious blend of strings and brass that compliment Aretha’s earthy and intense ooo-ooo-ooo’s. Aretha does some real good singing throughout, making it all around one of her strongest songs on her final trio of albums for Atlantic. 

You won’t find Sweet Passion on Spotify… or Apple Music, or Tidal, or Amazon Music. Nor will you find it in CD bins anywhere. You might encounter it on vinyl though, because that’s the only format (aside from 8-track and cassette) that housed the album in significant quantities. It is one of five Aretha Franklin albums from the 70’s that has never been fully issued on CD or digital. 

The story goes that, when Aretha departed Atlantic Records in 1979, she left with the master recordings to these five LPs (With Everything I Feel In Me, You, Sweet Passion, Almighty Fire, and La Diva). That meant that it was challenging to acquire and reissue the albums, unlike her other Atlantic albums which were all issued on CD in the early 1990’s and digitally over the last two decades. 

Eight songs from these five albums have been remastered and pressed on CD. Sweet Passion is one of the lucky ones. Two songs from the album have been reissued. Lead single “Break It To Me Gently” was even reissued both on 1992’s out of print 4-CD box set Queen Of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings, and 2021’s 4-CD ARETHA box set, which brought both “Break It To Me Gently” and “When I Think About You” into the digital age.

It’s unfair that Sweet Passion gets the strictly negative rap that it does. In part, this dismissal is due to lack of awareness and accessibility. If the album was more accessible, more people would be listening to and analyzing it, creating more conversation and perhaps in turn shifting the conversation. The album’s reviews are impossible to find (unless, like me, you know someone with a stunning archive, thank you James!). Yes, there are biting, negative reviews, but there are also glowing, positive, and optimistic ones too. 

Reflecting on the slumps of both artist and producer, Paul McCrea offered, “So what odds on Sweet Passion reinstating them in the winners circle? Pretty good me-thinks.” Mike Duffy of the Detroit Free Press went a step further and called the album, “brilliant.” Granted, he spent half his review writing “I love you” over and over again, but he made it clear that Aretha, “puts every other female voice to shame.” “Note for note, Aretha is still unbeatable,” said another review. People Magazine went a step further, declaring that “Natalie Cole’s interregnum as Queen Pretender of Soul ends roughly midway through the first side of this LP.” 

New Musical Express’s Paul Rambali wrote one of the dissenting reviews. He observed that though “Aretha never really makes a bad album,” the arrangements and song selections, save for “No One Could Ever Love You More,” didn’t hold up.  Another review identified “three real duds,” going as far as to say that on “Sunshine Will Never Be The Same,” “Aretha sings it as if it matters, but it doesn’t.” Ariel Swartley offered one of the most critical reviews, calling the album largely “uninspired” (with “When I Think About You” as the sole exception), while noting that “her voice remains a presence, but that Midas touch that transformed lyrics… has disappeared.” A dozen years later in 1989, biographer Mark Bego dealt one of the harshest blows, calling the album a “disaster” and identifying “Mumbles/I’ve Got The Music In Me” as “one of her all-time worst recordings.” 

The shame of it all is that the critics aren’t wrong (although on that last note, there is a moment about two minutes into “Mumbles/I’ve Got The Music In Me” where Aretha, with two lead vocal tracks harmonizes with herself that’s chilling in the best way possible, and a 2001 performance of “Mumbles” at ‘VH1 Divas 2001: The One and Only Aretha Franklin’ more than redeems this 1977 version). There is something great here on Sweet Passion, but something is also missing, and it might just be the passion. No reviewer, nor this writer, is going to try to diminish Aretha’s voice, especially during this era. The late 70’s were some of Aretha’s best years vocally. But this material just doesn’t stack up, especially compared to what Aretha was able to achieve with Curtis Mayfield just one year earlier (although it’s worth noting that the next year, 1978’s reunion with Mayfield on Almighty Fire was “a rare Curtis miscue,” that “lacks fire” as David Ritz put it in 2014’s Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin). Was it the producer? The material? Or both? It’s hard to say. What’s easy to say is that as a whole Sweet Passion doesn’t come close to the best of Aretha’s material.

Sweet Passion may not be well-known or remembered, but visually, everyone knows it. The album’s cover was shot by photographer David Alexander, who’s best known for shooting The Eagles’ Hotel California. It is one of the most iconic photos of Aretha, featuring her against a black background with her hair in a tight, high bun. She’s wearing a string of pearls and a black strapless dress (which isn’t visible on the album’s cover). It’s an understated glamor headshot that captures Aretha at her finest, a morsel of redemption for the muted flavor of the record it houses. 

Listen to a full vinyl rip of Sweet Passion:

The post Aretha Franklin’s ‘Sweet Passion’ Yielded Mixed Results appeared first on THE 97.

Electrifying expanded Aretha’s sound, serving up big band arrangements and a few R&B arrangements, in hopes of expanding her reach while further solidifying her as a force to be reckoned with in jazz. That slight directional shift wasn’t a decision that everyone agreed on though, and it can’t be called a turning point because it didn’t lead to longstanding beneficial results. However, the album does mark a few noted changes in Aretha’s life, professionally and personally. 

First of all, the album marked the end of her work with John Hammond as her producer. Hammond is the person who signed her to Columbia Records. Second, it marks the first album with her first husband Ted White in the picture. The two dated and married in the time between the release of her debut and the commencement of work on Electrifying. Ted wasn’t just her husband, he also assumed the role of her manager, a position he’d remain in until they separated in 1968. 

The story goes that Aretha and Ted dated for around 6 months and were married during the second half of 1961 in Ohio. The exact date and location that they were married remains unknown. She was 19, he was 30. Those two events are significant because they explain what happened after The Electrifying Aretha Franklin was released. Different factions with varied degrees of clarity struggled to define who Aretha Franklin was, resulting in the patchwork of material that makes her Columbia material hard to confine to one musical direction or genre. That’s a story for another day. Back to album number two.

Recorded under the working title ‘The Incomparable Aretha Franklin,’ John Hammond is listed as the album’s sole producer. He disputed that credit, alleging that it was a credit in name only. He was told he could only produce her album cuts, and that their work together concluded in winter 1961. He remembered producing two cuts from the sessions: “Hard Times” and “That Lucky Old Sun.” 

Hammond’s recollection was half right. He did only produce the album cuts. However, he produced all but four of the fifteen songs recorded for the album. Columbia quietly revealed this when they released the Take A Look box set, attributing the production of those four tracks to Al Kasha in the box set’s liner notes (“Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody,” “Ac-Cent-Tu-Ate The Positive,” “Operation Heartbreak,” and “When They Ask About You”). Kasha is best known for becoming a two-time Academy Award winner for Best Original Song in 1973 and 1975. 

Hammond’s goal was to frame Aretha as the next big jazz star, so he was focused on producing formidable jazz records for her. As Mark Bego observed in The Queen Of Soul, Hammond wasn’t concerned with creating ‘Aretha the pop star.’ Aretha made a similar observation in Aretha: From These Roots, writing “Hammond saw me as a blues-jazz artist… (he didn’t seem interested in pop hits (Franklin, 87).” This was, after all, the man who discovered Billie Holiday. Holiday died in 1959, less than a year before Hammond signed Aretha to Columbia Records. John Hammond was out to create the next Billie. 

Aretha’s debut on Columbia Aretha with the Ray Bryant Combo contained her first twelve professional recordings. She was accompanied by a combo led by Ray Bryant (and, fun fact, film legend Spike Lee’s father on the bass). It made for an intimate and jazzy body of work, accentuated with flourishes of blues and pop. Hammond was certainly off to a good start considering DownBeat magazine named her New Female Vocal Star of the Year in 1961. 

Electrifying expands Aretha’s jazz profile and overall sonic profile. Hammond mixed in more sounds and styles, most notably big band. Aretha is heard in front of both an orchestra and a full horn section for the first time. The songs Hammond didn’t produce aimed to bring Aretha into the pop world, and burgeoning R&B realm as well.

None of the players from her first album reappear here except for Spike Lee’s father Bill Lee, who plays bass on four cuts. Writer/arranger John Leslie McFarland was also a returning contributor from Aretha’s debut. He’d written half of the songs on her debut, and this time around contributed four compositions. 

McFarland was the only composer to bring multiple new songs to the album’s final tracklist (“I Told You So,” ”It’s So Heartbreakin,’” “Rough Lover,” and “Just For You”). The rest of the material was all interpretations of material claimed by other artists, largely part of the Great American Songbook. For those unaware, that encompasses a host of standards that exist in the jazz and pop canon, written in the teens, thirties, and forties. The one other new record was “Nobody Like You.” It was a unique pick. It was one of her mentors in gospel, Rev. James Cleveland. 

From the album’s opening notes courtesy of a string section, the sonic profile of this record expands beyond her debut. The strings create a lush, plush landscape that yields as Aretha glides over her opening notes of “You Made Me Love You,” made popular by Judy Garland (it was the b-side to “Over The Rainbow”). She unapologetically bends the notes to fit where her impeccable ear sees fit, delivering a remarkably smooth and controlled performance; at first, that is. She gradually crescendos as the song meanders along, until she reaches her climax, cracking her voice as she surpasses the peak of her vocal register. She tackled the song a different way in 1966 when she recorded a second arrangement.

She’s unrelenting in her vocal expressiveness throughout the album, and unafraid to test the limits of her vocal range. There’s more electricity in Aretha’s performance here than on her debut, to give credence to the album’s title. She displays room to improve control as she goes for those runs and embellishments that approach the limits of her range, but she’s got the rest down pat. 

The influence of Dinah Washington shines clearly through on McFarland’s “I Told You So,” one of the highlights of the album. It swings like a brassy big band record, but it also has a jazzy undertone in the groove, with a touch of blues in the percussion and piano. Aretha enjoys some sassy gloating after her man comes crawling back to her. She was stuck crying when he left her for someone new, but she told him he’d beg her to take him back. And there he is. She kisses him off brilliantly as the song crescendos, “When you were leaving I told you then, You needn’t ever come back again, So let me tell you with a last goodbye, I told you so, I told you so.”

Another of McFarland’s originals, “It’s So Heartbreakin’” might sound familiar at first. It confounded me when I heard it for the first time, because the piano introduction is nearly identical to that of Aretha’s smash 1970 cover of “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied).” Aretha might be the pianist on the song (the credits confirm that it’s either her or another musician), so it’s fair to assume that she’s behind those notes. The way that piano part comes off, especially during the brief piano solo, seems akin to Aretha’s unique style of playing. Vocally she’s unhinged, especially when she screams “the man really turns his back on ya!” right before the song fades out. 

“It’s So Heartbreakin’” is one of the Hammond productions that leans more into the R&B realm than most of the album’s other jazzier cuts. She sings about two-timing lovers, specifically Janie, who had John enraptured but ran off Bill instead. It’s fodder that could play well with the teenage audience both musically and topically. 

It’s always amused me that two songs with seemingly contrary titles appear one after the other on the LP’s first side. “Nobody Like You” and “Exactly Like You” may appear to be contradictory, but they’re actually complimentary messages. “Nobody Like You,” is one of the Rev. James Cleveland’s few decidedly secular compositions.  Aretha looks everywhere but “can’t find nobody like you” on this bluesy ballad. It could almost pass for a gospel lyric, since the essence of the record revolves around the protagonist unable to find anyone like “you.” The idea of searching for someone and not finding anyone comparable could certainly be an allusion to God. But the lyrics “now it’s all so lonely, since you went away,” dispel that possibility because it would be unlikely for someone to sing about God abandoning them and them missing God. Complimentarily, the subject of “Exactly Like You” checks all the boxes of what the protagonist is looking for. Their waiting paid off, because they’ve found exactly what they’re looking for in this “you.” 

On her debut, Aretha reflected on finding herself a “Sweet Lover.” Here, she was looking for a “Rough Lover,” which might have been seen as risky territory without giving the song a listen. “Rough” in this case meant a gruff, tough, “sweet and gentle day and night, but mean enough to make me want to treat him right” type of man. She “don’t want no cream puff, baby,” she ad-libs near the song’s conclusion. Speaking as what would have been considered a cream puff, that one didn’t exactly age well. 

Aretha also waded into festive territory on the album. “Blue Holiday” is melancholic and jazzy, with holiday lyrics, produced by Hammond. Inversely, “Kissin’ By The Mistletoe” was recorded during the sessions but relegated to a compilation album and single, and produced by Kasha. It’s got a traditional pop holiday sound to it. They perhaps represent the best contrast between the directional differences intended for Aretha by Hammond and the brass at Columbia Records. 

Al Kasha’s pop contributions were put front and center despite representing a minor portion of the album. They were also the label’s priority. Kasha’s sessions with Aretha took place before she even returned to the studio with Hammond. The recordings with Kasha took place in July and August of 1961, while Hammond’s took place from November 1961 through January 1962. 

Two of the songs Kasha produced were well-known covers. “Ac-Cent-Tu-Ate The Positive” was a hit in 1945. Within two days of Bing Crosby’s version of the song hitting the Billboard charts (where it would peak at #2), it received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.  

Like the album’s opening cut, “Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody” was another record associated with Judy Garland. Aretha takes it and bends and twists her delivery, respectfully blowing Judy out of the water with her incredible vocal performance. She also gave some staggering performances of it on the piano. They’re some of her earliest live performances that can be found online. The song was also The Electrifying Aretha Franklin’s lead single, though in a unique twist the b-side out-performed it on the charts, along with everything else Aretha did on Columbia Records.

That b-side was a song Kasha co-wrote called “Operation Heartbreak.” It was excluded from the album but released as “Rock-A-Bye”’s b-side. “Operation Heartbreak” managed to become Aretha’s highest charting recording on Columbia, peaking at number 6 on the R&B chart. 

One of the strongest moments they recorded didn’t even make the final cut. A cover of Ray Charles’ instrumental “Hard Times,” is a glaring omission. The instrumental recording offers one of the earliest opportunities to hear Aretha’s brilliance as a pianist. And she doesn’t let the song go by without saying something. She issues a few runs in the last 30 seconds, most notably wailing “Ray Charles said it was hard times but I feel alright!” Alright! It’s the perfect garnish on this beautiful display of Aretha’s exceptional skills at the piano. It was finally unearthed and released on 2002’s The Queen In Waiting compilation. It’s fair to assume that the label heads didn’t want a mostly instrumental jazz number on an album for an artist they were trying to move into the pop world.

While Aretha drew from Ray on “Hard Times,” Ray returned the favor with “That Lucky Old Sun.” He heard Aretha’s melancholic version of the standard and was inspired to record his own grand, orchestral version, with an expansive chous behind him. Aretha’s version is intimate, accentuated by a smaller string section which sweetens the warmth of the bass and chords of the electric guitar. It wouldn’t be the first time she inspired one of her peers to take on a song, either. On her next album, released in the second half of 1962, Aretha covered “Try A Little Tenderness.” Her version would inspire Otis Redding to deliver the definitive version four years later in 1966. 

That next album, The Tender, The Moving, The Swinging Aretha Franklin, marked a clear directional shift in Aretha’s music, moving further away from jazz and more into pop. What Electrifying represents, is the last clear-cut attempt at framing Aretha Franklin as the next big jazz star. Hammond never worked with Aretha again, though he praised the work Jerry Wexler did with her when she moved to Atlantic. Aretha left most of the album behind her in her Columbia days, though she did mention enjoying a number of the cuts on the album. She did mix “Rock-A-Bye Your Baby With A Dixie Melody” into her live set a few times in later years, notably as part of an oldies medley she performed a number of times in the 1980’s. 

Listen to The Electrifying Aretha Franklin:

The post The Electrifying Aretha Franklin: Aretha’s Sophomore Album appeared first on THE 97.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vk0uLfweiXI 

“The Music’s No Good Without You” would have been an adventurous choice for a lead single in the United States. The vocal dials up the auto-tune even higher than “Believe” in an era where auto-tune was still used primarily to correct pitch, not as a transformative vocal effect. Coupled with the trance-inspired beat, it makes for an intriguing way to kick off a body of work and engrosses the listener. Instead, the U.S. version of Living Proof (released on February 26, 2022) was led by the radio-ready, vocally organic dance-pop record “Song For The Lonely,” which also became the opening cut on the U.S. version of the album. It’s a song that Cher still cherishes despite it’s minimal impact. In 2018, she said “Song For The Lonely,” “might be my best song I’ve ever done,” echoing a sentiment she expressed to Billboard Magazine on the eve of Living Proof’s U.S. release in early 2002. 

I still have a vivid memory of the cold February day in 2002 when I secured my copy of Living Proof. It was one of the first 100 cds I owned (I’ve been cataloging them since 2002, because there are a lot). The album was prominently displayed at the entrance to Sam Goody as a New Release and that cover drew me in, especially after having enjoyed Believe so much. After getting home from my town’s Sam Goody, I sat in the family room at my parents house and studied the glossy liner notes with photos of Cher scattered throughout. The wigs. Oh the wigs. Her platinum blonde hair is nearly white on the album’s cover, accentuating her pale skin and causing her to resemble one of the elves from Lord of the Rings. It’s an album cover with depth and character, giving the impression that she’s embodying a gothic snow queen. She had me mesmerized at just 11 years old. 

Living Proof struck all the right chords for me. As a budding closeted gay pre-teen, I’d already begun gravitating towards the divas of pop and R&B. In turn that also meant that I was being exposed to some pretty significant dance music, largely via the integral dance remixes that typically accompanied 90’s and 2000’s singles. But Living Proof was my first full-blown dance album (Believe is dance, but not as intense as this). By juxtaposing anthemic hooks with a range of dance music styles Living Proof helped push this budding gay deeper into the world of dance music.

Back then, I had no idea that Living Proof had already been circulating around the world since November 2001 with a different sequencing, tracklist, and lead single. It was enthralling to discover and then acquire a copy of the Japan version of the album. Japan’s edition includes the song removed from the U.S. version, “You Take It All” as well as Japan’s exclusive bonus track, “The Look.” It’s a unique experience to consume the album with different sequencing and two different tracks, as well as marinating on their exclusion from the U.S. version, which led to a different listening experience than overseas fans (or those who knew where to get the import in the US). 

Living Proof wasn’t the first Cher album to experience a stifled release and restructured tracklist. More than six months passed between 1995’s It’s A Man’s World November release in Europe and late June release in the U.S. Not only did that album’s tracklist cut 3 tracks and re-sequence the rest when it arrived in the U.S., it also remixed recordings in hopes of giving them stronger appeal in the American market. For all the work that went into restructuring Living Proof for the U.S. market, it failed to replicate the success of Believe. However, the album is an underrated masterwork of dance anthems amongst Cher’s extensive, genre-diverse discography. 

Though Cher released an album between Believe and Living Proof, 2000’s not.com.mercial was an internet-exclusive release composed of folk-rock songs written and recorded in 1994. Her label rejected the songs in 1994 because they were seen as, you guessed it, “not commercial,” so Cher held onto them and dropped the set in 2000. That made Living Proof Cher’s first commercial effort after skyrocketing back to the top of charts and winning her first Grammy Award ever (yes, Cher didn’t win her first Grammy until 1999,) with “Believe.” She continued to lean into the electronic and dance motifs that helped make Believe a smash success. 

After the positive returns for her vocal effects use on “Believe” (the only song on that album to implement such effects), Cher liberally uses them throughout Living Proof. Her voice is so smooth that even when there’s no vocal effect it sounds like there might something helping her along (there’s not). That’s part of the magic of Cher.

Hinging on the success of Believe, which focused on and found its footing with dance tracks, Living Proof dives even deeper into the world of dance. Believe deviated from dance at times, but Living Proof does not. The album almost bore the same name, and had a working title of ‘S.O.B. (Son Of Believe).’ Both the final title and the working title’s acronym are perfect fits for Cher and her personality, as well as one of the album’s recurring themes: resilience. The album drew its title from a line in “A Different Kind Of Love Song”: “I am part of you, we have living proof, there is some kind of light that flows through everything.” 

Not only does Living Proof zero in on its musical focus, it also shifts lyrical focus. The album centers around themes of love, loss, reflection, resilience, and unity. There’s such a heavy focus on love that the word appears in five separate song titles. They range in subject from songs about spreading love in the non-romantic sense (“A Different Kind Of Love Song,” “Love One Another”), the power of love (“Love So High,” “Real Love”) to the challenges of existing in love after loss (“Love Is A Lonely Place Without You”). And those are just the songs with the word in the title.

“Song For The Lonely” (“[This Is] A Song For The Lonely” on international pressings) takes things a step further and merges all the album’s themes together in one record. It was written about persevering through loneliness, in any form. “Can you hear this prayer, someone’s there for you,” Cher pleads as she attempts to quell the slightest bit of loneliness in even just one person.  The song took on another life and became something of an anthemic cry of resilience because it was released in the immediate post-9/11 world. “This is a song for the lonely… for the broken-hearted, battle-scarred… when your dreams won’t come true.” Even two decades later, it’s hard to separate the song from that singular event, for which Cher dedicated the music video. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tmL-d5SGgeg 

On both sequencings of the album, “A Different Kind Of Love Song” immediately follows. The driving, warm dance-pop beat fuels Cher’s computer-distorted vocals as she attempts to unify by reminding the world that “I am part of you, these are universal truths.” While other records narrow their focus to one person, this love song is “dedicated to everyone.” It’s a feel-good, dance-floor ready record that even hysterically found its way onto Will & Grace during Cher’s second cameo on the show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jActugPSGls 

Love and unity also rule “Love One Another,” another driving dance-pop record that would be, by any other artist, unbearably schmaltzy. Cher makes it work, even delivering the line “try to understand, open up your heart, a fist is just a hand, it can come apart,” with such conviction it sounds powerful and revelatory. She doesn’t say anything earth-shattering, but she expands on the commonalities from “A Different Kind Of Love Song,” and calls for unity, forgiveness, and spreading love and kindness. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM4cUP_jMic 

She creates other overwhelmingly warm declarations of love while narrowing her focus to a romantic partner. “Love So High” begins with an acoustic introduction that boils over into another thumping beat, and recollections of a love that reached heights allowing her to touch the sky. “Body To Body, Heart To Heart,” pounds with a touch of Latin influence and disco strings as Cher illustrates a scene of two lovers intertwined, “I don’t know where I end, not sure where you start,” she concedes after declaring  “I could drown in your eyes, die in your arms” during the song’s anthemic chorus.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd0AOkr9SYk 

She finds her best groove on the record with the ecstatic and more electronic “Real Love.” It’s light on the percussion during the verses, letting declarative synths do the heavy lifting. Record scratches abruptly silence the music, allowing the full instrumental to surge in at the inception of the anthemic hook. It even briefly phases in a piano during the second half of the chorus. It delivers just four notes that deliciously resemble that iconic piece of “The Glow Of Love” re-used on Janet Jackson’s “All For You” in 2001 and Aretha Franklin’s “Here We Go Again” in 1998. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WawVoX9yxys 

Preceding the songs about loss is “Rain Rain,” a dance-pop record that illustrates the emotional storm that brews when Cher is apart from her lover. “The sun is strong when you’re near, but when you’re gone it disappears,” Cher laments as she wishes he would return because only he can stop her tears, which pour like rain. The same goes for the yearning she projects on “The Music’s No Good Without You.” He was “the center of attention, the eye of the storm” who’s absence makes her “agonize till (he) come(s) back and (they) dance that close again.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjCQN2eyNgk 

On “Love Is A Lonely Place Without You,” she explores the void that exists in love when the other person is gone, while stumbling . “Though I’m moving on, I’m still holding on,” she concedes in the bridge, while she finds herself orbiting “Believe”’s sonic territory on the chorus. It’s a place that many have found themselves as they attempt to keep going after enduring the loss of a love. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=su4lOGcJvwM 

The pair of songs that are unique to their respective versions of the album cover similar ground, and coincidentally, both land at track eleven. Both detail loss in their own right. On the international version, “You Take It All,” makes the lights in the disco go dark. A single spotlight remains on a despondent Cher, with minimal vocal effects applied as the ambient garage beat phases in and out. She cryptically laments inevitable loss “like the sea takes the land from under (her) feet.” The U.S. track, “When You Walk Away,” is another dance-pop record with a big hook (penned by the tremendous Diane Warren) that falls in line with the other radio-ready cuts. A resilient Cher frames a dissolving relationship not as a loss, but rather as her remaining, and the other party walking away. She’s firm and confident in her position and there will be no tears, begging, or even dying as a result of this disengagement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CAqvkaUHUI 

Resilience converges with loss on the third international single, “Alive Again.” Cher contemplates a life where she could solve all the relationship problems that have led her to “a bridge I need to burn before I leave.” She sounds like a phoenix, preparing to burst into flame and implode into ash, completely aware that she’ll rise again stronger than before. The biggest crime of this album is that “Alive Again” didn’t receive the full remix and video treatment it and its anthemic chorus deserved. It did half-receive a music video, which was stitched together using footage from a commercial shoot that features Cher in numerous wigs, while only actually singing the song in the red wig. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK8CD27L6FA 

While the album’s sequencing varies between the two versions, one song remains in the same place: Both close with a pulsing cover of Bruce Roberts’ “When The Money’s Gone.” It ends the album on a high note. After spanning the album’s themes, the song second-guesses and asks the question, “will you love me baby, when the money’s gone?” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbNA4nPInBI 

It’s hard to resist the bossa nova tango of the Japan-exclusive bonus track, “The Look.” It musically has no place on this album, but it’s a razor-sharp description of those intoxicating moments of instant attraction. “It’s the look that’s got me hooked, I can’t take my eyes off you” a mesmerized Cher explains. Plus the record has a catchy hook and an always-essential key change at the optimal moment, plus a seemingly random electric guitar solo a-la Carlos Santana. She probably could have gotten this on a Santana album if she had recruited him to participate. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIyrgt8lVGw 

For a period of time, the international version of Living Proof appeared on Spotify in the United States, making the alternate sequencing and removed song “You Take It All” available digitally in the U.S. for the first time. It’s since been removed, but of course the song is easily discoverable on YouTube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42zoBP2tHwI 

In the lead-up to Living Proof’s release, someone gaffed and accidentally pressed a 5-track album sampler with Cher’s demos of five of the album’s songs. For a deeper dive, they’re absolutely worth a listen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv15DKlafvs 

Living Proof was also reinforced with an artillery of dance mixes to keep dance floors grooving to Cher all night long. “Song For The Lonely,” “The Music’s No Good Without You,” “A Different Kind Of Love Song,” “Love One Another,” and “When The Money’s Gone” all received the remix treatment, plunging Cher even deeper into the dance world. With the exception of “The Music’s No Good Without You,” all of the remixes from Living Proof rose to number one on Billboard’s dance chart in the U.S. Their availability today ranges from digital to vinyl-only. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4TFnL4vB9o 

Twenty years later, this thirty-something gay man revels in Living Proof. With a greater cognizance of what Cher’s singing about on these songs of love and loss, her intense vocals resonate through the depths of my soul. These days, I find myself spending more time with the international version, with the album’s original sequencing. It’s a no-skips record for me, and continues to be, regardless of which version I’m spinning. Though the album failed to replicate the success of Believe, it upstages Believe in it’s lasting quality and consistent sonic profile. 

Stream Cher’s Living Proof

Sources:

https://retropopmagazine.com/cher-exclusive-interview/ 

https://www.today.com/popculture/cher-reveals-2-her-favorite-songs-she-wishes-were-bigger-t203776 

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/cher-offers-living-proof-77247/ 

https://books.google.com/books?id=9Q8EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA100#v=onepage&q&f=false

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On June 25, 2009, news broke of Michael Jackson’s death, leaving fans and millions of mourners around the world in shock and disbelief. His sister Janet was at home in New York, ready to begin production on the sequel film, Why Did I Get Married Too? It was only days later at the BET Awards, when a grieving Janet made her first public appearance since her brother’s death to address the audience. “To you, Michael is an icon. To us, Michael is family,” she said. “And he will forever live in our hearts.” The world continued to salute and celebrate the life of Michael Jackson, paying homage to his legacy at numerous musical events following his death.

In one show-stopping tribute, Janet Jackson honored the King of Pop with a surprise performance of their 1995 hit “Scream,” at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards. Jackson’s performance received a standing ovation from the crowd and endless praise from viewers and critics. Two months later, Jackson released her second hits compilation, Number Ones. She made a number of televised performances in support of the album, including opening the 2009 American Music Awards with a medley of her greatest hits.

Though the decade would end in perhaps the most unexpected way for Janet Jackson, she was about to prove her strength in numbers – reminding us that she was still Miss Jackson, despite the pain and unspeakable heartache.

Broken Hearts Heal

After reprising her role as Patricia Agnew in the 2010 Tyler Perry film, Why Did I Get Married Too?, Jackson recalled the film’s working process to be both nurturing and therapeutic. “Work helps focus all of that energy on something that is of value to you,” she explained during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar. Her newest single, “Nothing,” served as the theme song to the film. In it, Jackson’s professing of holding to the moments and people in our lives is strikingly applicable to, not only her character’s mourning, but her own reality – “Cherish every moment like it’s the last / Trust in me…,” she sings. Jackson then returned to movie screens only a few months later, this time as a less optimistic Agnew and a more shrewd, Anna Wintour-like H.B.I.C. The film – another Tyler Perry creation – was For Colored Girls, an adaption of the 1975 Ntozake Shange play of the same name. Jackson’s performance as Joanna Bradmore, a fashion magazine editor, earned her two Black Reel Award nominations: Outstanding Supporting Actress and Outstanding Ensemble.

Jackson marked her return to the stage in 2011, setting foot on the Number Ones: Up Close and Personal World Tour. Described as a “love affair between me and those of you who have supported me and my work for all these years” by Jackson, the tour’s approach was set to be much more organic than those of Jackson’s past. Instead of stadiums and arenas, Jackson was front and center in intimate theaters and venues, where she could literally be “up close and personal” with her beloved fans. Without missing a single beat, the pop legend performed all of her greatest hits with the same exact perfection and finesse as their debuts from years (some even decades) prior.

In February 2011, Jackson released her very own self-help book, titled True You: A Journey to Finding and Loving Yourself. Co-written with David Ritz, the book was inspired by Jackson’s own bouts with insecurities from self-esteem issues, weight struggles, and self-love. Jackson would later disclose the challenges she faced in conceptualizing the book’s material. “The whole book was difficult to write. I am a very private person. I guess I always have been, even as a child.” The book wasn’t an excuse for self-pity, but a show of support for those who identified with the same issues as Jackson’s. Like her music, Jackson’s True You became a source of comfort for her followers – helping them find solace in the process of living and loving themselves as their true selves. The book would turn Janet Jackson into a best-selling author, topping The New York Times Best Sellers List, in March 2011.

Unbreakable

After a previously aforementioned marriage to billionaire businessman Wissam Al Mana in 2012, Jackson dipped out of the spotlight, only to return with a new studio album and accompanying world tour. The album would be the first to be released under Jackson’s newly established record label, Rhythm Nation – establishing Janet Jackson as one of the first few African-American female artists to own a record label.

In June 2015, Jackson released the unknown titled album’s lead single, “No Sleeep.” After charting on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 67 (it would later reach a peak of No. 63, thanks to the J. Cole-featured album version), it became Jackson’s longest-running number-one hit on the U.S. Adult R&B Songs Chart, after spending 12 weeks at the top.  Later that month, Jackson was honored with the Ultimate Icon: Music Dance Visual award at the BET Awards.

In August, the Unbreakable Tour launched. Fans not only caught a listen to some soon-to-be-released material, but noted Jackson’s stage costumes as rather reserved for the singer who became a nexus for baby-making music and sex teasing shows. In alliance with her supposed conversion to Islam and Al Mana’s reported “none of that American [stuff]” demands, Jackson’s stage performances were the kid-friendliest since her days as a fledgling recording artist. Though just as thoroughly entertaining, many praised Jackson’s newly tamed image as grown and appropriate for a 50-something-year-old pop star. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said for some of her bum-baring peers.

In October 2015, Jackson released her eleventh studio album, Unbreakable. The album was met with rave reviews and the number-one slot of the Billboard 200, making Jackson the third musical act in history to have a number-one album in each of the last four decades. The album’s tour and promotional efforts were later paused, due to Jackson’s pregnancy announced the following year.

After vowing to resume all missed concert dates, the tour was then reworked and retitled as the State of the World Tour. Beginning in September 2017, the tour’s focus shifted as a more socially awareness campaign. The tour also marked Jackson’s first since her divorce from Al Mana. In a highly acclaimed show number, Jackson’s powerful rendition of The Velvet Rope’s “What About” led many to speculate the song’s domestic violent lyrical content was representative of Jackson’s marriage to Al Mana. Jackson’s brother, Randy, claimed that his sister suffered verbal abuse at the hands of Al Mana, leading to the demise of their marriage. But if Jackson’s career had proven anything by this point, it’s that there is always light at the end of the tunnel.

The following year brought a series of flattery for the musical titan. After Justin Timberlake was announced as the year’s Super Bowl Halftime performer (making it his first return since… you know), people were quick to criticize how blatantly contradictory it was to have a man who exposed a woman’s breast on live television be welcomed back for seconds, while the woman was left to grapple with the broken pieces. This led to a social media prompting of #JanetJacksonAppreciationDay trending on Twitter every Super Bowl Sunday since.

But, let’s forget about the Super Bowl for a minute. Janet Jackson was finally, just finally, starting to earn back all the glory she was never deserving of losing in the first place. In May 2018, she was awarded the Billboard Icon Award, becoming the first African-American female artist to receive the honor. She released the summer-ready “Made For Now,” featuring reggaetón master Daddy Yankee. And, after three nominations, it was announced that she would be inducted into the 2019 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Joining the likes of Britney Spears, Mariah Carey and Jennifer Lopez, Jackson then announced a four-month Las Vegas concert residency, titled Metamorphosis, in February 2019. The residency would be housed at the Park Theater at Park MGM resort. The year 2019 also marked the thirtieth anniversary of Rhythm Nation, taking Jackson on a train of performances in celebration of the milestone, including headlining the U.K.’s legendary Glastonbury Festival.

Janet, Today

After a whirlwind of accolades, Janet Jackson was prepping to enter another decade of her career, with new music, new performances, and a new outlook. The freshly divorced mommy of one announced the Black Diamond World Tour in February 2020. Its provided album, Black Diamond, was slated to be released sometime within the year. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both projects were canceled, and Jackson has yet to announce any future plans for Black Diamond.

But Jackson’s name still found its way into the headlines, thanks to perhaps the most gripping pop culture series to come out of our quarantine. Following the release of the Hulu documentary series, Framing Britney Spears, viewers leaped into attack mode after learning how – surprise, surprise! – Justin Timberlake used his breakup with Spears as a ploy for sympathy-turned-success. After being called out for his jibing of the pop princess, fans also demanded he apologize to Jackson. Both she and Spears are certainly more than deserving of a proper apology from the man whose career skyrocketed off of the public humiliation of two of the most popular women in music history. So, the fans asked demanded, and the fans received.

In an Instagram post, dated February 12, 2021, Timberlake issued a public apology, writing “I’ve seen the messages, tags, comments, and concerns and I want to respond.” He then went on to say, “I specifically want to apologize to Britney Spears and Janet Jackson both individually, because I care for and respect these women and I know I failed.” Was the apology only a scapegoat for any more public scrutiny of Timberlake’s sexist and misogynistic past? Probably. After all, it only took him a whole 17 years. Maybe it’s time for his own eviction, and maybe he won’t need 17 more years to speak up about it.

Thankfully, it won’t be much longer until fans get to hear Jackson’s own story in her own words. It was announced in March 2021 that Jackson’s life story will be getting airtime, with a two-night, four-hour documentary from Lifetime and A&E. The television special, titled Janet Jackson, had been in the works for three years, and promises unfiltered access inside the life of one of the world’s most private public figures. And from that access, fans and viewers will watch as Jackson will reportedly open up about the death of her famous brother Michael, the allegations that marred his career, the Super Bowl infamy, and more. The documentary will premiere this weekend.

This and news of Jackson’s own Julien’s Auctions has made the members of her rhythm nation more than happy. The exclusive Beverly Hills showcase, presented as “Iconic Treasures from the Legendary Career and Life of Janet Jackson,” took place over the star’s fifty-fifth birthday weekend (May 14-16) – where buyers were able to nab some of over 1,000 pieces of Jackson’s very own personal belongings. The items up for grabs all ranged from Jackson’s showstopping tour costumes, to record plagues, to childhood memorabilia, to music video looks (in which Kim Kardashian snagged Jackson’s “If” costume for $25K, which seems minuscule for the “Scream” look that sold for $125K), and some rather intimate items, too (whips and sex dice). Even the iconic key earring Jackson donned during the Rhythm Nation era sold for $43,750. Proceeds from the auction went to the child sponsorship program, Compassion International.

Janet, Forever

With over 100 million records sold worldwide, it’s no wonder how Janet Jackson became one of the best-selling musical artists of all time. For nearly five decades now, she’s remained a constant example of what becomes a legend. But despite her preserved place in pop music, there’s still something about Janet Jackson that is criminally overlooked. With the very, very few artists left of Jackson’s stature, one can only hope that time will acknowledge the megastar as one of the greatest living entertainers still competing with – or rather instructing – her class of hopefuls. Janet Jackson has not only proven to be an instrument of inextricable talent and strength but a continuous influence and inspiration of countless prodigies that danced in her footsteps. All these years later, Janet Jackson is the sole owner of one thing – control, and she’s still got lots of it.

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Nipplegate

The year was 2004. Janet Jackson was selected as the headline performer for the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show. The world knew to expect a show like no other by a performer like no other, and that’s exactly what they got.

As Jackson cascaded onto the stage during her “All For You” opener, the show was nothing more than the Janet Jackson concert everyone had tuned in to see. After a quick costume change, Jackson reappeared from the stage in an all-black, leather-donned getup – much reminiscent of her looks during the late 80’s. Assisted by her legion of backup dancers, they broke into chorus of her 1989 anthem, “Rhythm Nation.” Like many halftime shows, surprise guests weren’t really surprising, as much as they were expected. P. Diddy, Nelly, Kid Rock and Jessica Simpson were actually all part of this halftime series, but practically forgotten about by anyone and everyone who watched. Why, you might ask? Because of Justin Timberlake and nine-sixteenths of a second.

The former *NSYNC band member joined Jackson onstage for the closing number of his solo hit, “Rock Your Body.” A poorly underdressed Timberlake bumped and gyrated with Jackson, as football fans and halftime-only devotees gazed over the two’s steamy chemistry. In what had become perhaps the most famous pop culture event to happen on live television by that point (or ever), the very, very last second of their performance would change the history of television and the future of Janet Jackson’s career.

As Timberlake recited the last lines to his song – “Bet I’ll have you naked by the end of this song” – he tore away Jackson’s bustier piece, in an attempt to reveal the red-lace bra that was nestled underneath. But instead, he revealed a sunburst-deco nipple ring and nothing but pure flesh. Janet Jackson’s breast had now been exposed to millions and millions of eyes. Everywhere… for only nine-sixteenths of a second, that is.

A firestorm ensued. Labeled as a “wardrobe malfunction,” within a matter of practical seconds after the show’s ending, the NFL announced that MTV (the halftime show’s producer) would no longer be involved in any halftime shows from thereon. MTV claimed to have had no knowledge of this assumed stunt, while the NFL practically claimed to have nothing to do with Janet Jackson in the first place (you know, after they hired her to perform at the game). All the blame, emphasis and attack was on Jackson – while Timberlake was able to swerve any liability with a slick, “Hey man, we love giving you all something to talk about.” His career went on to exceed, while hers plummeted.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was flooded with complaints, and would later impose a $550,000 fine against Jackson and the CBS network for their airing of the game. Though, in 2011, the courts would later rule that the FCC’s fine was unjust. The damage, however, had already been done. Jackson had been blacklisted from all Viacom subsidiaries, resulting in her music videos being pulled from MTV and VH1, and her songs be banned from radio stations. Janet Jackson’s invitation to present at the year’s 46^th Annual Grammy Awards was retrieved, while Timberlake was not only present at the ceremony, but took home the award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance and Best Pop Vocal Album. The incident had been referred to as “nipplegate” by the press, and Janet Jackson was the target of everyone’s aim.

In an attempt to ease tensions, Jackson released a public apology. “Unfortunately, the whole thing went wrong in the end,” she explained. “I am really sorry if I offended anyone, that was truly not my intention.” In a 2006 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Jackson expressed her not wanting to make the video apology, being it was only an accident. But, considering her eighth studio album was set be released only a month after the Super Bowl wreckage, Jackson’s team felt it was a smart choice. Damita Jo, taken from Jackson’s middle name, was released in March 2004, to a slump in sales and a mixed response from critics who felt the album’s excessive sexual nature was only adding salt to the wound. Sure, Damita Jo might be Jackson’s most provocative work to date – as tracks like “Warmth” and “Moist” will prove – it’s surely become a fan favorite over the years among Jackson’s supporters.

Not everyone was ready to welcome Janet Jackson back with open arms. Her fans stood by her side, but the general public was ashamed by what they presumed to be a publicity stunt gone too far. It was at that moment that the legacy Janet Jackson had built for herself was completely ruined, all because of… a boob? The only logical explanation for the overdramatizing of the situation was that 2004 was still a time when censorship on television was not quite as progressed as it is today. Sex and raunch are staples of showbusiness these days, and are much more tolerated as “artistic” than taboo. The same network (CBS) that cried victim to Jackson’s breast, is the same network that allowed Cardi B and Meg Thee Stallion to dry-hump, twerk and pole dance during their performance at last year’s Grammy Awards. Thanks to the halftime show blunder, though, all live television programs must operate on a five-second delay and YouTube (yes, YouTube) was created.

Time has since passed, and more and more people have agreed on the general exaggeration of the wardrobe mishap. Of those people was former FCC Chairman, Michael Powell, who even issued an apology (of sorts) to Jackson ten years after the incident, stating “I personally thought that was really unfair. It all turned into being about her. In reality, if you slow the thing down, it’s Justin ripping off her breastplate.”

It’s also worth pointing out that Les Moonves – the former chairman and CEO of the CBS Corporation – set out to make Jackson’s life a living hell after the debacle. But, his bitterness would only get him so far. In 2018, he was forced to step down as chairman after a series of sexual allegations were pressed against him. That same year, it was announced that Janet Jackson would be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Oh, and by the way, in case anyone even cares to remember, the New England Patriots won the 2004 Super Bowl.

Love & Marriage

Janet Jackson’s career hasn’t been the only subject of chaos. Her notoriously private personal life has had its fair share of ups and downs. And controversies. At 18, fresh off of Jackson’s newly found freedom, she married R&B singer James DeBarge. Another child of musical roots, James was a member of the family singing group, DeBarge – best known for their 1985 hit, “Rhythm of the Night.” The two eloped in September 1984, but were annulled in November 1985.

In 1991, Jackson secretly married dancer and director René Elizondo, Jr. The two managed to keep their marriage a secret for almost a decade, only revealing their nuptials to the public when it was announced that were they separating in 1999. They were divorced the following year. Their split would be the cause of both grief and turmoil for Jackson, after Elizondo filed an estimated $10-25 million lawsuit against his former wife. It would take a total of three years before a settlement would be reached between the two.

In 2002, Jackson began a very public relationship with music producer Jermaine Dupri. The Atlanta-born rapper served as the founder and owner of So So Def Recordings, working with the likes of many R&B/hip-hop artists. His most popular musical contributions include Usher’s Confessions (2004) and Mariah Carey’s The Emancipation of Mimi (2005). Though rumored to have been engaged, the two never married. After an eight year-long romance, the couple called it quits in 2009.

Jackson would find love again in 2010, when she met Qatari businessman Wissam Al Mana. Their relationship blossomed shortly after, and the two were married during a private ceremony at their home, in 2012. Following their pairing, Jackson stepped away from the spotlight and seemingly divided her time between the Middle East and London, leading to a storm of speculation about Jackson’s whereabouts and questions of her music career ever returning. One concerned fan even created a mock missing-persons flyer for the absent star, which surprisingly got a response from Jackson on Twitter – “Too funny, too sweet.” In 2016, months after the start of her Unbreakable Tour comeback, Jackson announced she and Al Mana were expecting their first child together. At 50-years-old, Jackson welcomed their son, Eissa Al Mana, on January 3, 2017. Only three months after the birth of their miracle baby, it was announced that Jackson and Al Mana would be divorcing.

Reports claim their separation was in part due to Al Mana’s dominance over Jackson’s new image and lifestyle. Fans were quick to notice how conservatively dressed the star had gotten since the two began their courtship, and Al Mana’s religious beliefs were a far cry from Jackson’s Jehovah’s Witness upbringing. Like times before, though, Jackson had sought for control – not of anyone else, but for herself. This time was no different.

After the Storm

The calming of the Super Bowl fury took a while to soothe. Though Jackson continued to make new music, her being completely ostracized greatly impacted its exposure and overall success. In 2006, she released her ninth studio album, 20 Y.O. The album was set to commemorate 20 years since the release of Control, but failed to impress. Despite its lack of commercial performance, the album still managed to peak at No. 2 on the Billboard 200. And, for what it’s worth, the ear-candy single, “So Excited,” deserved better. The following year, she starred in the Tyler Perry film, Why Did I Get Married? Earning praise for her role as psychologist Patricia Agnew, the film became Jackson’s third consecutive film to open at the number-one spot at the box office.

After signing with Island Records in 2008, she released Discipline. The album became her first to top the Billboard 200 since 2001’s All For You. Though still blacklisted from radio formats, the album’s lead single, “Feedback,” managed to peak at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot 100. Jackson then launched the Rock Witchu Tour in September 2008, performing a mix of old and new favorites, and even some forgotten dust collectors from her first two studio albums. Jackson then left Island Records after then-CEO L.A. Reid’s mishandling of the album’s promotion.

The frenzy that followed Jackson’s career by that point was about to take a devastating turn, as tragedy was about to strike.

Be sure to check back in next week for the next part of our series, Janet Jackson: Then, Now & All the In-Between!

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The album artwork depicts Aretha quadrupled and fragmented like the glass on a church window mosaic. It feels holy, though the lyrics are far from the holy homecoming Aretha staged 10 days before the album’s January 24, 1972 release. In my single digits I knew little of that (although I received my copy of Amazing Grace: The Complete Recordings for my 9th birthday). With all that said, Aretha infuses her gospel intensity into every lyric she delivers across the album. 

In an effort to further support my burgeoning musical interests, my parents bought me a Sony boombox for my bedroom. Very excitingly, it also included a remote control and had a ‘sleep’ function, which began my years-long routine of falling asleep to music. I have vivid memories of throwing Young, Gifted and Black into that CD tray and hopping into bed as Aretha opened the album playing the piano on “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby).” Over the years I was fortunate enough to see Aretha perform live a dozen times, and amidst those performances I saw her run through a quarter of the album (and one b-side) live in concert. 

Aretha Franklin hit her true artistic peak in the early 70’s. She soared to the top of the charts in the late 1960’s incorporating rhythm and gospel into the blues to help create the sounds of R&B and soul music. Her soulful voice was so immense it turned every head it reached. She demanded equality at the height of the Civil Rights movement. In the midst of a tumultuous marriage, Aretha put her pain and trauma into her music, creating some of the most crucial recordings of the 20th century. Then she rose up, divorced herself from her marriage, and trudged onward. 

1971 marked the only year in Aretha’s 12-year tenure at Atlantic Records when she didn’t release a studio album. She wrote and recorded though, and released a crucial piece of her musical tapestry: Aretha Live at Fillmore West. As she began work on her next LP, she was in a position she hadn’t been before: Aretha was truly happy. She was in a relationship with Ken Cunningham, who would be her partner for years, and had given birth to her fourth child, Kecalf. The joy she felt poured out of her musically throughout Young, Gifted and Black. The album was released on January 24, 1972, 5 years to the day that she cut “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and found the sound she’d been in search of since signing her first record deal in 1960. 

Sessions for Young, Gifted and Black commenced in the summer of 1970 and wrapped up five months later in February 1971. The album was recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami and both Atlantic Recording Studios and The Record Plant in New York City. The album’s production was led by Jerry Wexler, who exclusively produced Aretha’s Atlantic recordings until 1973. Arif Mardin, who handled arrangements and Tom Dowd, who led the engineering were both also receiving production credits by this time. Aretha also deserved a production credit, though she didn’t receive one until later that year on 1972’s Amazing Grace. She was backed by some of the strongest band members that ever played with her. Much of the album is credited to Cornell Dupree on the guitar (he’d also worked on Spirit In The Dark, along with Bernard “Pretty” Purdie on the drums and Chuck Rainey on the bass. 

Two other giants of music also participated in the sessions. Billy Preston and Donny Hathaway traded off duties on the Hammond organ, and Hathaway also played the Fender Rhodes into the clouds on “Day Dreaming.” Dr. John even pops up to contribute additional percussion to the ever-funky “Rock Steady.” Background vocals largely alternate between two of Aretha’s greatest backup groups: The Sweet Inspirations, and Aretha’s sisters Erma and Carolyn. 

More than twenty songs were recorded during the sessions, which were tailored down to a twelve-track album. Three cuts went into the vault until 2007. Three were released as singles unaffiliated with the album, and one was one of their b-sides. Those singles are among her best covers: “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” “You’re All I Need To Get By,” and “Spanish Harlem.” 

Aretha wrote four of the album’s twelve records, tying it with both its studio predecessor and successor as the most Aretha-penned songs on an LP. She also wrote one of the album’s four b-sides. But unlike the last LP, these songs have a brightness to them, even in their darkest moments. Over the five months the album was worked on, Aretha wrote some of her finest material, and delivered some of her finest readings of others’. 

From the album’s opening cut, the tone deviates from her previous Atlantic albums. It’s the first Aretha album in her Atlantic years (and Columbia years too), to open with back-to-back love songs. This Girl’s In Love With You comes close, but “Son Of A Preacher Man” isn’t really about love. Like “Preacher Man,” though “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby)” was both originally recorded by a British singer, and produced by Aretha’s production team of Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin, and Tom Dowd. This time though, the singer in question was Lulu, who cut the record for her 1970 LP New Routes. The arrangement is very much pop, merging acoustic guitar with the dreamy strokes of the orchestra. It’s a typical pop arrangement of the era that could have easily suited Dionne Warwick or The Supremes. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUuV3ybvkpc 

Naturally, Aretha resets the arrangement and reverses the tempo downwards with her masterful piano playing. Her meandering keystrokes create a deceptively timid introduction to what becomes a magnanimous declaration of love. It sounds at first like the soundtrack to the shy, bashful girl with her head down and her hand covering her blushing smile of adoration. As she steers the expanding arrangement towards the chorus, it’s like watching that girl straighten out as she finds her confidence, loosens her shoulders, raises her head, drops her hand, and unabashedly declares her foolish adoration, as she pleads that he let his love light shine on her. Aretha sounds more impassioned with adoration than she ever has before, and the only true sin of this album is that this record fades out right when Aretha hits a vocal stride. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amhofKBvuyU 

It constantly feels like Aretha has stumbled on clarity in her life throughout the album, even as she’s singing about being a fool and getting lost in daydreams, uplifting Black people and trudging forward, and the desire for peace and harmony in the world. No record better encapsulates this newfound clarity than her cover of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Dusty Springfield record, “A Brand New Me.” It could have been the album’s opener to tell the listener, “guess what? Aretha’s not down and out anymore.” She’s standing on her two feet, carrying a smile that could eclipse the sun. This is some footage I took one of the final times I saw Aretha. She breaks into a mean, minute-long piano solo just when the song would otherwise be winding down. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMlilbU-HtI 

The quad of Aretha-penned songs on this covers album are undoubtedly her best compositions to appear on a single body of work. “Day Dreaming” and “Rock Steady” were both top ten top records and top two R&B records. “All The King’s Horses” is a powerful portrait of a deteriorating relationship. “First Snow In Kokomo” is an Aretha gem that still hasn’t gotten it’s due. 

“Kokomo” marked the first time Aretha cut a record with no rhythm. Though Aretha and her piano drove many of her Atlantic hits, this time there’s no percussion to draw attention away from that crucial fact. It’s also a rare occasion when Aretha acts as a narrator instead of a main character. The song was originally a poem that Aretha put to music. It’s inspired by the happenings Aretha observed during a visit to Kokomo, Indiana, where Ken Cunningham’s mother lived. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKgTD1zpZy8 

On the contrary, “Rock Steady” is all about the music. That groove is infectious, and it is, “what it is, what it is, what it is” as the background vocals echo. It’s one of the funkiest records Aretha ever cut, and lives up to every bit of the “funky and low down feeling” she describes in the lyrics. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiB8_PpWedk 

Though her relationship with Ken Cunningham and the birth of Kecalf informed this body of work, a chunk of this album have hinged on another man. Aretha’s affair with the Temptations’ Dennis Edwards began sometime around when her marriage to Ted White began to dissolve. Their short, torrid affair inspired the other two Aretha compositions on Young, Gifted and Black: the classic “Day Dreaming” and the underrated “All The King’s Horses.” This pair of songs bookends their affair, and it’s not unlikely that the affair informed some of the other material and the emotion Aretha put behind it. 

She literally ascends into her dreamy musings on Edwards in “Day Dreaming,” one of the most beautiful love songs she wrote and recorded. It epitomizes romance budding on a breezy spring day. She takes a classic nursery rhyme and applies it to the end of she and Edwards on “All The Kings Horse.” It swaps out Humpty Dumpty for their hearts, as the object beyond repair. The verses are just as dreamy as “Day Dreaming,” but as the “walls started shaking” the dream screeches to a stop and the music starts to tremble. The song only has one short verse, and it’s filled out by Aretha lingering on the finality of their breakup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GFDUWzWP9A 

If “Day Dreaming” and “All The King’s Horses” bookended Aretha’s affair with Dennis Edwards, Dionne Warwick’s “April Fools” and the Delfonics’ “Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)” are their connectors. On “April Fools,” the dream is over and she ponders the vitality of their relationship. The song alternates between zipping, fast-paced verses and sweeping, pensive choruses. It sounds as though she lets the thoughts run through her head and then pauses to marinate on them. 

On “Didn’t I,” she strips away the soulful Philly pop of the original and funks it up. Elements of background arrangement maintain the essence of the Delfonics, but echo Aretha’s lead vocal instead of accompanying it. On top of that, she injects “yes you did”’s that transform the titular statement into a question “didn’t I blow your mind this time?” with a resounding answer. It’s straight up empowerment. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueTpSEAfWbM 

As the Civil Rights movement wound down, Aretha also seized this moment and got more overtly political in her music. Prior to the album’s release, she made headlines for offering to pay Angela Davis’ bail, and doubled down by seizing Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted, and Black” The title was shortened, the song was lengthened, and it became the album’s very fitting title. With a gorgeous introduction that plays like a gospel testimonial, she infuses a touch of funk and a gospel influenced rhythm into Nina’s prideful declaration and call to action. Aretha also makes the decision to cut lyrics that are specific to Nina’s experience and removes all the “I”’s except one: She changes the final line of the opening from “open your heart to what I mean” to “open your heart is all I need.” In that minor lyrical change, she transforms the song from an explanation to an opportunity to shift perspective. This is Aretha, ministering. It’s genius, complimenting genius. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LrGW6cmSIc 

A sentiment of “press on” permeates from Aretha’s piano accompaniment on her fourth Beatles cover, the originally melancholic “The Long and Winding Road.” She might as well just be singing “persevere” over and over again. Even though that’s not the subject of the song, every note she sings seems to imply it. There’s an unsaid sense that the road may be long, but it’s worth traveling. It could even be said that she’s singing to God. 

Elton John’s “Border Song (Holy Moses)” closes the album in fantastic fashion. It feels like a call to action when Aretha delivers it with gospel fervor. Interestingly, the single version uses dual lead vocal tracks for the majority of the record. One Aretha is enough, but two?! It’s a powerful force. There’s only one known performance of the song, and it’s every bit as good as the record. In 1993, Aretha sat down across from Elton and the two played and sang their way through the song together for the first and only time. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHhW-lWWxbo 

Four additional cuts from the album’s sessions were also released. A heartfelt cover of Vivian Green’s “Lean On Me” was crucial enough to be issued as the b-side to non-album cut “Spanish Harlem” in 1971. It sounds right at home alongside the other material from the album, sonically and topically and could have easily been worked in. Aretha poured her everything and pushed her voice to it’s on  this declaration of unwavering support. It came into the digital age along with three other b-sides on 2007’s Rare and Unreleased Recordings from the Golden Age of the Queen of Soul. In addition to the four b-sides, 2021 saw the release of a few alternate takes from Young, Gifted and Black on the ARETHA box set. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSV3ZTJqjrI 

She also covered Edna McGriff’s “Heavenly Father,” at Jerry Wexler’s suggestion. It didn’t make the album because as Jerry told David Ritz in 2014’s Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, Aretha felt it “didn’t belong on a pop album,” which he didn’t argue with at the time. One Aretha original also fell in with these covers, “I Need A Strong Man (The To-To Song).” It sounds like it may just be a demo. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg0VXK_RNf8 

“My Cup Runneth Over” was another cover recorded during these sessions. Originally written for the 1966 Broadway musical I Do, I Do!, it was a hit on the pop charts for Ed Ames in 1967. Though it wasn’t released until 2007, it was one of the only b-sides Aretha ever sang live. One of the many times I saw Aretha live was at New Jersey Performing Arts Center in March 2015. It was one of the best Aretha shows I saw. It was also a heavy Young, Gifted and Black evening, which saw her performing “Day Dreaming” and “Oh Me Oh My (I’m A Fool For You Baby)” (which may have been the final live performance of the latter). When she reached the point of the show where she sat at the piano to obliterate the audience on an even higher level, something came over her and she began to sing “My Cup Runneth Over.” The band hadn’t even rehearsed on it. Whatever came over her stuck though, and the song became a mainstay in her live show from there on out; she performed it at most of her final concerts. It’s possible that this was the very first time she performed it live. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj9QedT305o  

The legacy of Young, Gifted and Black demands that it be taken as one of the best Aretha albums. Rolling Stone named it among their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. It also won the Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance in 1973, becoming the first album to win in the category. It also marked Aretha’s sixth consecutive win in the category, which she was sole winner of from its inception in 1968 until another artist finally won in 1976. 

I’ve been calling Young, Gifted and Black my favorite Aretha album for a good few years now. It’s always easy for me to put it on and just let it play through. The optimism Aretha projects even in the face of heartbreak always seems to be a bright spot for me. She sang her full and bursting heart out on every record she cut during these sessions. It is a crucial piece of Aretha’s discography, and an essential listen for anyone who wants to understand her music.

Listen to all the released recordings from the Young, Gifted and Black sessions: 

The post Aretha Franklin’s Young, Gifted and Black Turns 50 appeared first on THE 97.

90’s Vixen

After closing out the decade on the highest of highs, Jackson entered the 90’s as a solidified icon. Though Rhythm Nation provided Jackson with years of adulatory success, the next wave of her career would prove to be redefining and record breaking.

By this point, Jackson was on every record label’s “Most Wanted” list. However, after an attempt by A&M to renew her contract, she left them for Virgin Records for an estimated $40 million. Janet Jackson was now the world’s highest-paid recording artist. This would then change only two days later, when her brother Michael Jackson signed a deal with Sony Music Entertainment for $60 million. Siblings, am I right?

This much anticipated chapter of the Janet Jackson storybook was steering in a different lane, though. Jackson was entering her mid-twenties, and in doing so, both her image and her sound underwent some tweaking. She was still Janet, the singer and dancer extraordinaire. But she wasn’t celebrating control or fighting for injustices this time. She was talking about one thing – sex.

Her fifth studio album janet. (released May 18, 1993) – two days after the star’s twenty-seventh birthday – was compiled of more R&B sensualities than her 80’s LP’s, but was still decorated with glimmers of funk, dance and the new jack swing that had become synonymous to her sound. After receiving criticism that her success and popularity had nothing more than to do with the fact that she was a child of the Jackson empire, Janet went on to write every single song on the album, as well as co-produce each track alongside Jam and Lewis. The title, janet., is to be read as “Janet, period.” – separating herself from her familiar ties and acknowledging her own place as an artist in the business.

The album granted Jackson with two more number-one hits, “That’s The Way Love Goes” and “Again.” While the former became one of the longest-running hits of the year, “Again” served as the theme song for the 1993 John Singleton film, Poetic Justice. Starring alongside rapper Tupac Shakur, Jackson made her motion picture debut as the film’s protagonist – Justice, a deeply wounded woman who’s been both hurt and healed by love. The song also provided Jackson with a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song.

The album’s other hits – “If” and “Any Time, Any Place” – plus many of its deep cuts, further showcased the newly unchaste Janet, but without pushing the envelope too far past the point of interest. The public was able to embrace this new side to Janet Jackson because this new side represented the natural growth of a woman in her twenties – stronger, confident and freer. To further entice and promote her tale of sexual liberation, Janet Jackson appeared topless on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in September 1993. The photo represents Jackson wearing nothing but denim and curls, with the hands of her then-husband René Elizondo, Jr. covering her breasts. Fans were quick to notice that the cover photo was actually the same photo Jackson used for the cover of janet. – only the album cover depicted Jackson from the neck up, while the back pictured solely her waist. The photo is often regarded as one of the most iconic magazine covers of all time and has been parodied and mimicked by countless other celebrities, artists and nobodies over the years. At this point, “superstar” was just a secondary title for Janet Jackson. She was now a sex symbol.

In November 1993, Jackson embarked on the Janet World Tour, earning praise for the show’s complex choreography and theatrical stage setup. Jackson’s career had become the golden standard for performers by now. As her diva peers, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and perhaps her biggest competitor Madonna, were all topping the charts and selling out arenas, Jackson still found a way to lead instead of follow. Then, in 1995, her and big brother Mike teamed up for their iconic duet, “Scream.” It was the first time the two had ever done a song together (with the exceptions of Janet providing background vocals on Michael’s “P.Y.T.” in 1982, and Michael on Janet’s “Don’t Stand Another Chance” in 1984). Janet previously had reservations about working with her legendary brother, as she was adamant about not wanting to seem like she was riding on the coattails of her famous family. But, Janet had a name all to herself by this point, and the timing never seemed more right.

The song was made in response to the media bashing regarding Michael Jackson’s 1993 child sexual abuse allegations. Though the song would go on to become a hit for both Jacksons, and its costly $7 million sci-fi inspired Mark Romanek-directed music video would result in the most expensive music video ever created, it’s a touching yet aggressive display of brother and sister standing side by side. Janet wasn’t acting as Janet Jackson, the popstar. She was acting as Janet Jackson, the sister.

That same year saw the release of the hitmaker’s first greatest hits collection, Design of a Decade. Jackson’s starpower by this point was brighter than ever. In fact, it was more of a supernova in a galaxy of twinkling counterparts. As The Boston Globe put it, “And who could dispute that Janet Jackson now has more credibility than her brother Michael?” Her contract with Virgin Records was then renewed for a whopping $80 million, earning her back the title of being the highest-paid recording artist in history. But despite insurmountable success, Jackson was struggling behind her trademark smile. Depression and anxiety resulted from an emotional breakdown by the recording artist, and the byproduct was the music.

In October 1997, Jackson’s sixth studio album was released – The Velvet Rope, an offering inside the unknown private world of one of the most famous women to exist in it. The album was applauded for its openness to topics of sadness, domestic violence and same-sex relationships. In addition to the album’s darker essence than that of Jackson’s previous projects, the singer debuted a striking new red afro, septum piercing and a kind-of-hard-to-tell-but-not-really nipple piercing. Like janet., The Velvet Rope would later take Jackson on another highly attended and critically acclaimed world tour, The Velvet Rope Tour.

The album’s signature single, “Together Again,” gave Jackson her eighth number-one hit on the Hot 100, and was inspired by the death of a friend she lost to AIDS. Songs like such, as well as “Free Xone” – a campy anti-homophobia anthem – established Janet Jackson as a gay icon. She would later be awarded the GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Music.

But not every song on The Velvet Rope marked a celebration. The album’s closing track, “Special,” is a solemn plea to feeling needed, wanted and validated. The album’s heaviest moments, though, won’t be found here, or even on the raunchy beginner’s guide to BDSM, “Rope Burn.” Jackson’s vulnerability is on full display on tracks like “What About,” a song detailing the harrowing effects of an abusive relationship. “What about the times you hit my face? What about the times you kept on when I said, ‘No more please…’,” Jackson sings in agony, serving as a voice to those who have been beaten, battered and scarred.

Despite the album’s subject matter, Jackson was still able to find light from the pain. The Velvet Rope allowed the singer to fully immerse her life, her suffering and her anguish in her work.  “I’m still working on myself,” Jackson revealed during a 1997 press interview with MTV. “I like myself very much, and I can finally say that for the first time in my life. Now I’m trying to learn how to love myself.”

Icon

At the close of a dominating decade, Jackson’s Emmy Award winning HBO airing of The Velvet Rope: Live in Madison Square Garden became the most watched program among home subscribers, garnering over 15 million viewers. Following her winning the Legend Award at the 1999 World Music Awards, Jackson was declared Billboard’s second most successful artist of the decade, behind Mariah Carey. It was now the start of the new millennium, and nothing was stopping Janet in her tracks.

She made her second feature film appearance in 2000’s Nutty Professor II: The Klumps, playing Professor Denise Gaines, alongside comedy legend Eddie Murphy. The following year, it was announced that Jackson would be honored with the very first MTV Icon Award. The ceremony consisted of various artists, including Pink, *NSYNC, Usher, Destiny’s Child, Britney Spears and Aaliyah, commenting on Jackson’s influence and performing the songs that turned the child star into a worldly icon. Jackson would close out the show with her newest number-one, “All For You.”

The single became one of Jackson’s most favored hits. Sampling “The Glow of Love,” by 80’s disco group Change, the dance track became an instant classic, even earning Jackson the title as being the “Queen of Radio.” After hitting the airwaves, it became the first song in history to be added to every pop, rhythmic and urban radio format during its first week of release. Receiving a seven-week long run at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, “All For You” became the longest-running number-one hit of the year. It’s accompanying album, All For You, would be released in April 2001.

Upbeat and bouncy, All For You was drastically different than its less-than cheery predecessor. The album gave the diva the biggest opening first week sales of her career, after becoming her fifth consecutive album to crown the Billboard 200 Albums Chart. Through a cohesive mix of pop, R&B, dance and rock, All For You provided the perfect balance of party jams (e.g. the irresistibly catchy “Come On Get Up”) and bedroom bangers (e.g. the erotically inducing “Would You Mind”). Like before, the album was supported by a world tour that both impressed and shocked attendees with Jackson’s overtly sexual stage antics – most visible during her performance of “Would You Mind,” in which a latex-clad Jackson would select an audience member to join her onstage and receive a private dance from the bombshell and her six-pack assisted figure… all while being strapped onto a gurney. Sound familiar? Go re-watch R&B singer Normani’s performance from 2021’s MTV Video Music Awards. Janet Jackson is still influencing the rookies.

Jackson’s history of exaltation, though, was about to come to a dramatic halt.

Be sure to check back in next week for the next part of our series, Janet Jackson: Then, Now & All the In-Between!

The post Janet Jackson: Pop Music’s Leading Lady appeared first on THE 97.