Say a Little Prayer Edition Part 1

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 November 2024

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

You know her honorific: Queen of Soul. And heavy is the head that wears the crown. In her lifetime, Aretha Franklin didn’t just want to be revered. She wanted hits. But Franklin made pop come to her, not the other way around. When showtunes and standards didn’t work in the ’60s, Aretha switched to gritty R&B and gospel harmonies—and started topping the charts. When she recorded a live album in a church in the ’70s, it became her best-seller. When the MTV era changed the game in the ’80s, she did New Wave synthpop her way—and topped the charts again. In the ’90s, she tried house, hip-hop and New Jack Swing, scoring hits deep into her fifties. Join Chris Molanphy as he explains how Aretha Franklin earned her regal title, one hit at a time. She won our respect by infusing the charts with a holy spirit and amazing grace—and she always remained a natural woman. Podcast production by Kevin Bendis. Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond’s yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond’s YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts, just go to slate.com slash
0:23.7	hit parade plus. You'll get to hear every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus,
0:30.6	hit parade The Bridge, our bonus episodes, with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics,
0:37.4	and pop chart trivia.
0:39.2	Once again, to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus.
0:44.6	Thanks.
0:45.3	And now, please enjoy part one of this hit parade episode.
0:49.6	Thank you. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate Magazine, about the hits from coast to coast.
1:09.6	I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic,
1:12.6	and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series on today's show. After the events of this
1:19.3	difficult fall, I thought we could all use a little prayer. So, here's a song from 56 years ago,
1:27.3	in the fall of 1968, another tumultuous time
1:32.3	in American history. And the voice singing this version of, I Say a Little Prayer, could not
1:39.0	be mistaken for anyone else, Ms. Aretha Franklin, who, the time had only recently been dubbed the Queen of Soul.
1:49.0	As they say, heavy is the head that wears the crown.
2:05.3	Franklin would spend more than two-thirds of her life as the so-called queen of soul.
2:11.3	I dare say that was both an honor and a burden.
2:16.2	Sure, Aretha was gifted, stately, regal, a legend. But to be prosaic for a
2:23.3	moment, her take on, I Say a Little Prayer was also just a big hit, her ninth straight top 10
2:31.4	in a streak of top 40 smashes. That's the thing about Aretha Franklin. She was also one of our greatest pop stars. At various
2:54.2	times in chart history, she was going toe to toe on the Hot 100 with everyone from the Beatles
3:02.0	and the Supremes to the Bee Gees and Elton John to Prince and Sting. Think about that.
	...

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