Photo: Atlantic Records.
It wasn’t an emotive voice.
Wait. Stop there. The “Queen of Soul”? What’s “emotive” mean?
“Able to arouse intense emotion”
Respect” “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” Shall I go on?
Maybe I mean it could arouse emotion but didn’t … convey it. Or contain it.
I’m listening.
Compare what she did to Nina Simone, Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday. For all of them, there’s a sense – almost note by note – of a range of feeling. Listen to Aretha cover Dinah (there’s a whole album), and it’s an amazing voice in its range and its dynamics, but there’s none of the sadness, the sense of being surprised by happiness or overwhelmed by love.
She was a different kind of singer. Different times, too.
Absolutely. But isolate her voice on almost anything she’s recorded, and it isn’t …. for lack of a better word, “emotive.” Nina groans and growls and gets breathy like a child. Billie slings from the hip.
Part of the difference is Aretha never sounds like a victim. Or not often. Part of what we hear in those others is the sound of a woman surviving abuse. She doesn’t go there.
That’s part of it for sure. So where does she go? “Respect”: signature tune. From the opening horn riff and twangy country guitar, we know we got a beat. The arrangement’s incredibly strong. She sets her voice way up high from the start. Its inflection is mostly aimed towards confidence. She will – in the astonishing break –…