Aretha Under Fire

I try not to get too topical in my topics. (I’ve always wanted to write that sentence!)

First, I am not a political commentator. Our mission here at Professor Carol revolves around the teaching of history and culture through the lens of the Arts. This work keeps me plenty busy without treading on hot buttons. Beyond that, a surprisingly wide range of people read this website and use our courses (bless you all). Inevitably, things that make me boiling mad may not make you boiling mad. I strive, therefore, to keep things in balance as I put my shoulder to the plow.

Still, sometimes a pot does boil over. So here we go.

A group of social activists in Norway is pushing Apple Music and Spotify to ban the marvelous song You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman—a song composed by Carole King with words by Gerry Goffin. Anyone could sing this song, of course, and many people have, but the iconic and indisputable master-performance came from the voice of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin (1942-2018). And that’s primarily the one under attack (as well as the others, we can presume).

If you were jumping around in 1967 or soon thereafter, this song and the glorious diva Aretha Franklin need no introduction.

If you are younger or otherwise missed that era, two remedies suggest themselves. First, there are plenty of clips of Ms. Franklin bringing this song to  world-wide notice. But if you want to wrap yourself in a crystalline moment of music history, watch this regal woman in 2015 as she glides onto the stage of the Kennedy Center, clad in a spectacular mink, takes her place on the piano bench (her proper throne), and begins to sing. Watch the face and response of Carole King who was given one of the prized Kennedy Awards that evening.

I’ve watched this performance countless times. It never fails to bring a tear to my eye (as it did to the eyes of half the audience, including President Obama’s). It also cements the fact that this song belongs in our Great American Songbook—the ever-expanding collection of songs that have defined our national history and character.

In fact, if this song lacked such esteemed status, it would not be targeted. Who goes after long-forgotten arias from turn-of-the-1900s musicals–sentimental tunes that, in their day, flew off the shelf via sheet music and piano rolls? Perhaps 100 years from now, You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman will have lost some of its impact and be seen as solely a relic, representational of its era. But I kind of doubt it. If anything, its power grows stronger with every passing decade.

And that is precisely why You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman has found itself in the crosshairs of the ultra politically correct weaponry.

Often people ask me about popular music: do I even like it? (Yes, but let’s first define it.) Do I follow it? (Depends on the era and the national school of popular music—yes there are national schools—but yes, I do.) Do I consider it important in music history (absolutely)! In fact, let me take that out of my beloved parenthesis and say: absolutely!

The Era of Soul, the influence of Motown, the career of artists like Aretha Franklin, these things are pure gold in the annals of music history. In considering how to frame this essay, I wanted to remind you that Aretha Franklin herself had a very difficult life. Not only were the vicious realities of institutional segregation stacked against her, but her personal background was hard. Very hard. Her losses and distresses in childhood and young adulthood were many! Hers is a tough biography to read.

Plus, once she did begin to record commercially, it took time and certain heartbreak before she was able to push aside those who wanted to shape her prodigious talents in unfruitful directions. She recorded Respect: R-E-S-P-E-C-T . . . that’s all it took to put a world-wide audience at her feet. Then came You Make me Feel Like a Natural Woman. The rest, as they say, is history.

I would like to live long enough to be able to look back on the tidal wave of damage wreaked by cancel culture. The scholar in me wishes I could live long enough to see the slews of dissertations and cultural commentaries that will be written (some already are in publication). This aggressive mess will be analyzed much as the retrospective on any dictatorship, be it from ancient times or our own. But we have a way to go before that desperately needed perspective can emerge.

Of course, the attacks on the Great American Songbook have extended far beyond You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman, resulting in the elimination of significant American classics (starting with essential works by Stephen Foster). These attacks cast shadows over high-profile performers who perform such classics and now must eliminate them from recitals and recordings or mumble apologies for music that has shaped our American historical culture.

The ideological attacks don’t stop at music. How dismaying it is to be confronted in museums by apologetic new placards placed next to masterworks of art. Painful to read, these placards are sometimes larger than the tags that identify and explain the works.

These new postings, regardless of how worded, tend to send this message:

I bet you thought this was a fine work, right? And maybe it is. It’s still important and valuable enough to hang on these walls (perhaps not for long). Meanwhile, step back and realize what you see here: rather than a masterpiece of art, this is a flawed statement, filled with ideological mistakes that possibly do damage to those who don’t know better . . . but you know better now, because you have read this tag!

Really?

I’m waiting to find a new placard placed in the Rijksmuseum next to Jan Asselijn’s magnificent The Threatened Swan (c. 1650) detailing the aggressive nature of swans. Therefore, seeing this painting may cause discomfort to sensitive viewers. I wish I were joking.

One has to hope that this latest “cause” against Natural Woman will fall flat. More likely, in today’s climate, Spotify will come up with a warning label for the song. In that case, four fifths of the Sixties classics will need one too. And the pop music of the 1950s also. Wait a minute, songs from the 1940s, 1930s too . . . oops, it’s getting worse. We’d better go back and take on those sultry opera arias of the 19th century. And that won’t be the end of it, will it?

Meanwhile, if this latest tiff brings new honor to Carole King, Gerry Goffin, and Maestra Aretha Franklin, then some good will have come out of it. And if my writing about it sends you to this historically important, touching performance at the Kennedy Center in 2015, then all the better. On that evening, Ms. Franklin had less than three years to live, but true to her soul, she used every possible minute of that time to make music. And just thinking about that brings a tear to my eye.

[*Update:  Some news reports are indicating that the activist group posting about the song now claims it was parody, after denying it was parody. They inserted a “parody/satire” tag on their Twitter profile, but, interestingly, have now deleted that tag. (Will it return?)  Whether the post was parody or not seems to depend entirely on their subjective intent. Maybe the joke is on me, but the real attacks on great works of art, music, and literature are pervasive and not remotely funny.]