Aretha Franklin Spirit In The Dark Mono

Among the collection's 81 remastered tracks, 19 are making their CD and digital debuts, including alternate versions of classic hits, demos, rarities, and live tracks, like her stunning performance of '(You Make Me Feel) Like A Natural Woman' at The 38th Annual Kennedy Center Honors in 2015. To put Franklin's life and career into perspective, the collection is accompanied by liner notes written by Rochelle Riley, author and director of arts and culture for the City of Detroit, and David Nathan, a music journalist and soul historian who interviewed Franklin more times than any other living writer.

"Queen of Soul: The Atlantic Recordings" is an 87-track, four-disc box set that covers Aretha Franklin's Atlantic career, spanning from 1967's "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" to 1976's "Something He Can Feel". Over the course of the set, all of Aretha's best-known songs, including all of her Top Ten pop and R&B singles, are included. For fans who only know the singles, the set is primarily notable for the wealth of album tracks and forgotten singles that are included, which nearly equal the hits in terms of quality. Stopping just short of her move to disco, "The Queen of Soul" just misses being a totally comprehensive collection, but it remains definitive – it may miss some of her later hits, but every one of her greatest tracks is in the box. The Queen of Soul is one the cornerstones of any soul collection.

It's not for nothing that this is the second four-disc box set devoted to Aretha Franklin's career. 1992's Queen of Soul collected 86 tracks (5 of which were non-album), culled solely from her world-beating era on Atlantic (1967-1976).

This September, Atlantic and Rhino Records will release The Atlantic Singles Collection 1967-1970, a new Aretha Franklin set that spotlights those three years at Atlantic that produced so many international hit singles.

Aretha Louise Franklin (March 25, 1942 – August 16, 2018) was an American singer and pianist. Franklin began her career as a child singing gospel at New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, Michigan, where her father C. L. Franklin was a minister. At the age of 18, she embarked on a secular-music career as a recording artist for Columbia Records.