Rating: 2/5
Review:
Very disappointing
I'm afraid this album isn't very good. It's something I say with great sadness because Aretha is one of the true Greats and her work over the decades has almost always been excellent, and has been simply magnificent at times. However, The Great Diva Classics is a rather insipid and uninspired collection of songs which just don't work here.
Aretha's singing here is ordinary and uninspired (I can't believe I am saying that of Aretha Franklin, but it's true), the selection is pretty pedestrian and the arrangements and production are unexciting to say the least. There's a sort of glossy, corporate and soulless feel to the whole thing. (Making Aretha sound soulless is quite some achievement, but they've done it.) I've tried several times to see whether I'm missing something, but it just doesn't do anything for me at all.
I am sorry to have to be so critical of an album by someone whom I admire greatly and whose work has brought me such immense pleasure in the past, but I really can't recommend this. My advice is just to dig out some of Aretha's old classics from your collection and to give this one a miss.
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