Did Aretha Franklin ever have a number one?
Great singers are ten-a-penny within the music industry; singing is a skill that, to an extent, can be trained and learned by anybody. However, nobody could ever come close to replicating the same earth-shatteringly powerful vocals of Aretha Franklin, which is perhaps why her name to this day carries an unparalleled level of respect (pun, regrettably, unintended).
Far from the all-powerful ‘Queen of Soul’ she soon became, though, Franklin spent her formative years largely ignored. After honing her craft in the church halls and gospel choirs of her native Tennessee, the world was seemingly unwilling to recognise her unique vocal prowess during her time at Columbia in the early part of the 1960s. In fact, it was only when she made the jump to the pop-soul sounds of Atlantic Records in 1966 that the icon of Aretha Franklin was truly born.
With Atlantic, Franklin’s Columbia-era hit drought quickly became a remnant of the past, and the very first single she recorded for Jerry Wexler and Atlantic was one of her all-time finest moments, ‘I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)’. That particular single shot to the top of the R&B charts very quickly after its release, immediately establishing Franklin among the defining soul stars of the 1960s, which is even more impressive when you take into account the fact that she was battling it out with empires like Motown and Stax, with their endless rosters of now-iconic stars.
Franklin’s career wasn’t without its difficulties, of course, but once she was off the mark with Atlantic, she seemed to land upon an incredible run of tracks which perfectly toed the line between commercial appeal and artistic integrity, with the emotive quality of her voice always at the core of her appeal. That commercial appeal is probably best reflected in the fact that Franklin’s discography made her one of the best-selling artists of all time, an accolade that very few artists can ever hope to rival.
You might assume, therefore, that Franklin was no stranger to the pop charts and, to be fair, she wasn’t. Over the course of her expansive career, the soul legend entered over 100 singles into the Billboard charts in the US, but number-one singles proved to be a lot more elusive. Throughout her many decades, Franklin achieved only two number-one singles in the US, and only one in the UK – a stunning indictment on the record-buying public on both sides of the Atlantic.
So, what were Aretha Franklin’s only hit singles?
If you have even a passing knowledge of Aretha Franklin, her first number one single will surely come as no surprise. Back in 1967, she reworked and recorded a version of fellow soul hero Otis Redding’s ‘Respect’, and that era-defining recording quickly became the vocalist’s defining track, capturing the inherent appeal of her empowering performance and inarguably eclipsing Redding’s original version.
Inevitably, the track reached the top spot of the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1967, a few months after it first hit the airwaves. However, UK audiences weren’t quite as receptive to the song’s power. During a particularly strong week in the charts, the single peaked at number ten, behind tracks like ‘See Emily Play’ by Pink Floyd and ‘All You Need Is Love’ by The Beatles.
If pushed to guess which other Franklin song reached the top of the charts, if not respect, you would be forgiven for citing ‘Until You Come Back To Me’, ‘Baby I Love You’, or ‘Think’ – all very, after all, more than deserving of that coveted top spot. In actuality, Franklin’s second number-one, and her only UK number one, arrived two decades after ‘Respect’, in the form of ‘I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)’.
Recorded as a duet alongside George Michael, the horrendously 1980s single spent two weeks at the top of the pops in the United States and in the UK, where it kept Michael’s former Wham comrades Pepsi and Shirlie off the number one spot. And while no Franklin fanatic would argue that the single was one of her greatest performances, it was a number-one single which she certainly deserved at that point in her career.
