Doing it Their Way

By Josh Tyrangiel Monday, Sept. 15, 2003
    • Some artists sing the song, and some let the song sing them. For Aretha Franklin, the song has always been incidental — a cheap vehicle for her amazing voice. Sinead O'Connor, who possesses a completely different but equally distinctive talent, reveals herself in the lyrics she performs. Now both have terrific new CDs that showcase their strengths.

    With just one song, Respect , Franklin introduced feminism to popular music, but she has also sung about lesser things convincingly — like riding on a freeway of love in a pink Cadillac and being drawn through destiny to duet partner George Michael. She can basically do anything, and So Damn Happy , Franklin's first album in five years, proves the point again. So Damn Happy doesn't have a single great song, and it doesn't matter.


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    Most of the album is structured to let Franklin do her trademark thing: sing about making it through heartache with her faith intact. The Queen of Soul never really did melody: like an expert surgeon who leaves the nurses to stitch up, it's a little beneath her. Instead she rises and plunges over songs like The Only Thing Missin' and Ain't No Way . It's a style the Mariah Careys of the world have copied and perverted into a circus act, but Franklin actually invests her rumbles and squeaks with authentic emotion.

    The production on So Damn Happy is modern, minimalist and first-rate. Franklin has always had a great ear for contemporary music, which is why she has appeared in the Top 10 recently and James Brown hasn't. She gets Mary J. Blige to contribute some fine backing vocals and Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis to offer up a nice song and — presto! — Aretha is radio-ready. It doesn't take much to make the timeless timely.

    If Franklin uses melody as a base camp on her way to bigger things, Sinead O'Connor clings to it as if it were the only haven between her and the abyss. The contrast in styles is made conveniently clear on O'Connor's new double album, She Who Dwells ... , which features a spectacular cover of Do Right Woman. Where Franklin started the song in pieces and pulled herself toward an emotional victory, O'Connor opens Do Right Woman deceptively whole. She does not trill or soar; she just sings notes of remarkable clarity and intensity. But as the Dan Penn/Chip Moman classic unfolds, O'Connor's fidelity to each note becomes a form of quiet desperation. Like her old buddy Frank Sinatra, she makes songs great without appearing to try.

    The second disc of She Who Dwells ... features a pristinely recorded live show that has all the O'Connor hits, including a gorgeous string arrangement of Nothing Compares 2 U . But it's the first disc — full of unreleased tracks, covers and a few new songs — that's the revelation. O'Connor has never sounded like a little girl, but she manages innocence on Love Hurts , while her version of the Abba powder puff Chiquitita raises the song to something approaching beauty. O'Connor has said that She Who Dwells ... will be her last album, but then O'Connor says a lot of things. Maybe, like Franklin, she should stick to communicating through her singing voice.