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Aretha Franklin’s Aretha Franklin Sings The Great Diva Classics is on track to sell about 20K copies in its first week. That’s a respectable tally for a veteran artist, but it’s far below last month’s 196K debut by fellow diva Barbra Streisand’s Partners. Both albums have strong themes, which is practically a requirement these days for pop artists of a certain age. Streisand’s album is a collection of duets. Franklin’s album consists of covers of songs associated with female artists.
The album will enter next week’s Billboard 200 album chart right around #13. It will be Franklin’s 16th top 20 album; her first in nearly 30 years. Franklin was last in the top 20 in December 1985 with Who’s Zoomin’ Who? That album, which contained her Grammy-winning smash “Freeway Of Love,” also reached #13.
Franklin’s album includes a cover version of Streisand’s classic hit “People,” along with such other diva smashes as Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” and Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
This concept makes some sense for Franklin, since several of her biggest hits were cover versions of well-known songs. She made the top 10 on the Hot 100 with covers of three songs that had already been top 10 hits for other artists: Dionne Warwick’s “I Say A Little Prayer,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and Ben E. King’s “Spanish Harlem.” Even Franklin’s signature song, “Respect,” had already been a top 30 hit for its composer, Otis Redding.
A flaw in the album concept is that few of the divas being saluted are of Franklin’s stature. Gloria Gaynor? Alicia Keys? Sinead O'Connor? They should be saluting Franklin, not the other way around.
Aretha Franklin Sings The Great Diva Classics is in the same highly commercial (though somewhat paint-by-numbers) format as Rod Stewart’s Still The Same…Great Rock Classics Of Our Time (#1 in October 2006), Barry Manilow’s The Greatest Love Songs Of All Time (#5 in January 2010) and Santana’s Guitar Heaven: The Greatest Guitar Classics Of All Time (#5 in September 2010). There’s a good reason for that: Industry legend Clive Davis supervised all four albums (as well as Stewart’s The Great American Songbook series and Manilow’s The Greatest Songs Of The Decade series).
Franklin first cracked The Billboard 200 in November 1962 (when she was just 20) with The Tender, The Moving, The Swinging Aretha Franklin. She first hit the top 20 in May 1967 with I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You. (That album contained the immortal “Respect.”)
Franklin won’t be the only 1960s veteran in next week’s top 15. Neil Diamond is headed for a #2 debut with Melody Road. Barbra Streisand will probably slip from #5 to #7 with her former #1 album, Partners. Tony Bennett, who dates back to the 1950s, will probably rebound from #11 to #10 with Cheek To Cheek, his collaboration with Lady Gaga (which is also a former #1). Bob Seger will probably dive from #3 to about #14 with Ride Out, his first album in eight years.
Another theme album by a veteran artist is set to debut next week. Annie Lennox’s Nostalgia, a set of standards including “Georgia On My Mind” and “God Bless The Child,” will probably debut around #12.
But look for the #1 spot to go to a band of more recent vintage. Slipknot, which first charted in 1999, appears to have a lock on the top spot with .5: The Gray Chapter.
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