Aretha Franklin
While there is certainly some great music on this album, it isn't the all-time rave-up it might have been, which is to say that it just spins your socks around a couple of times without knocking them off. Franklin's version of the Rolling Stones classic Jumpin' Jack Flash, from the Whoopi Goldberg film sound track, illustrates things exactly. Keith Richards produced the track and basically recycled the Stones's momentum-building arrangement; Franklin seems to be working up to something. Yet the moment never comes. There are some more fully realized tracks. Franklin herself produced the Burton Lane/E.Y. Harburg standard Look to the Rainbow, which provides her with an effective vehicle for some vocal acrobatics. Narada Michael Walden produced the bulk of the album, most effectively a duet with ex-Whammer George Michael on the Simon Climie/Dennis Morgan tune I Knew You Were Waiting (for Me) and the roustabout Jimmy Lee. There are more routine stretches, though, than there ought to be from a singer of Franklin's talent. There is, for instance, no really noteworthy contribution from the backup band. If Franklin ever did an all-out album, it might be too much—too much emotion, too much beat—to take. But it wouldn't be a terrible way to go. (Arista)
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