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Aretha Franklin -- now 47 years old -- has a new album out. And
objectively it's as fine as a good new California wine. The songs are fine.
The arrangements are fine. And Franklin's voice -- that volcanic voice -- is
pregnant with intimations of wisdom she hardly had in her great days 20 years
ago.
But then who -- except pedants or the
prematurely dead -- listens to music objectively?
Subjectively speaking, the album
("Through the Storm," brought to us by Arista Records) is powered
by some chilling kind of artificial electric life. Nothing can save it, not
even an opening duet with Mr. James Brown, a peculiar embarrassment right from
his opening grunts of "Hih! Hih! Hih!" (This duet dates from two
years ago, by the way: it's not like James got furloughed from prison to
record it.)
Each time I've played it, I've wished I could
find some listener's equivalent of looking the other way. Because here are
these vocal heavyweights -- in their prime, even spiritual heavyweights --
engaged in what sounds like a musical version of shuffleboard in some
retirement home.
Or maybe they're like two Napoleons, jointly
exiled to Elba, reminiscing about the long-gone days when they wielded real
power. That's a more compassionate image, and more accurate, too, because
they don't sound like they've lost any inherent strength. But they do sound
irrelevant, like nobody's listening any more, or like they've lost any
context in which their music still meant anything.
And their subject, transparently, is the glory
of their past. That's not the official subject, of course: officially they're
standing before millions of potential record-buyers, engaging in what's
supposed to be some steamy flirtation: "Scratch my back, babe, like you
mean it…You're my jam in a jar."
But they sound too old, too powerful, too
wise: That can't be all they're singing about. And in fact it's not.
"'Re!" she sings, "and Brother James B!" -- thus
identifying both of them as the transcendently famous historical figures they
are.
Or as he sings: "We go back, baby!" The song really is about
their reputation, their history, their undying fame. It's a love song largely
by convention, I'd suspect, because love is what pop songs are supposed to be
about -- though the heft of their voices tells me that there's got to be lots
more going on.
I mean, if I were a fly on the wall while 'Re
and Brother James had a few drinks, would I want to watch them flirt?
Wouldn't I rather hear what they really think about each other, their past,
and the strange days of the present, in which -- with nobody about to dispute
their status as mighty icons of popular (and black) culture -- they keep
trying to restore an evanescent pop music success that isn't worthy of them
ever when they succeed?
And why isn't pop success worthy of them? Make
that "mere pop success," and the reason ought to be clear. Teenagers
get records on the charts; with the stature of Aretha Franklin, you ought to
sell 15 zugatillion records and dominate the field.
Because when you don't, here's what happens.
On your album you sing a duet in current pop style with Whitney Houston, who does
dominate the field. The song might be designed to accommodate inescapable
differences between the two of you in age, experience, and corresponding
vocal heft: You're rivals for the same man, and, as you sort it out, Whitney
gets to be the Princess, while 'Retha gets to be the Queen.
You both -- as you bait each other in an
extended spoken postlude you surely made up on the spot -- even seem to be
having fun. But what's the result? In the sparkling ocean of today's
pop/dance style, 'Retha sounds like an out-of-date (but for sure formidable)
battleship, and Whitney sounds like a happy, wriggling fish.
Whitney's the
one who sounds like she lives in an age defined by the song's musical style,
an age of mini-malls, music controlled by computers, and impending
high-definition TV. 'Retha sounds like she doesn't belong in it, or maybe
more precisely like she hasn't figured out where she fits in it.
Granted, she's had that problem for a while, ever since her great
gospel-pop years passed, and (as you can easily hear on her Atlantic Records
"30 Greatest Hits" collection) she went out looking for a style.
But the problem, I'd suggest, is not so much hers as it is a general problem
with pop, which takes its energy from the immediate present, and then pulls
the rug out from under even the greatest pop artists, once the age that made
them great transmutes itself (as eras always do) into something else.
There are ways around that, as new work from
other stars of the past can demonstrate. Dion, for instance, has a lovely new
album ("Yo Frankie") steeped in fully acknowledged nostalgia for
the place and time that made him great, New York in the '50s. David Bowie, in
"Tin Machine," seems (like Lou Reed in his current album) to
grapple with what he actually thinks about these days. And Carl Perkins --
though you'd never guess it from the title of his new record, "Born to
Rock" -- seems to accept various consequences of being 57 years old.
One consequence is that rockabilly, the
upstart style that propelled him 35 years ago to the top, has now settled
down to become one comfortable strand among the many that make up country
music.
And another is that he needs to sing about
love with all the maturity evident in his voice (which he does, quite
wonderfully, in the last cut on the album, "Love Makes Dreams Come
True").
Aretha, meanwhile, seems to want pop hits that
could just as well be sung by Debbie Gibson, or any other teenager -- a
project branded as both trivial and absurd by the deep (though for all we
know unexplored) experience of life anyone can plainly hear in her voice.
Los
Angeles Herald-Examiner, 1989
Ten years later, I reviewed her concert with the Detroit Symphony. I think I've
mellowed -- I was easier on her, though God knows everything I noticed here
is still happening, with an extra highbrow edge, as she's started singing
opera.
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