Can you improve on greatness? A selection of Aretha Franklin’s tracks have been given an orchestral makeover to celebrate the 50th anniversary of her signing with Atlantic Records. They form the album, A Brand New Me. Aoife Barry and Simon Maher gave the album a listen and joined guest-host Kay Sheehy on Arena to give it their rating.
The album features the original Franklin voice tracks with a new accompaniment by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London. Simon placed the album in a little more context.
“The big thing, of course, is that it’s done without Aretha Franklin being there and normally what makes a lot of the orchestral reworkings of songs work very well is that the singer comes in and they will adapt their vocal to suit…they’ll adapt the delivery of something to suit.”
Aoife agreed that Franklin being absent was a concern for her at first.
“There is the fear there’s going to be this, like, ‘uncanny valley’ thing going on where it’s not really real but it is real. I think they managed to actually mostly avoid that on the record and I think that’s down to the strength of her voice and the songs that she was singing.”
Kay was curious whether music purists will be put off by this reworking of classic songs. Simon can see both sides.
“When you go and you mess with some of the classics, I think there are people who will be offended by it …this album is kind of divided into ones that you kind of go ‘No, leave it alone’ and the ones that are like ‘Okay, that’s okay what you’ve done’. I think on ‘Respect’ it’s okay what they’ve done and then on tracks like ‘Think‘ I think it’s worked really, really well.“
Listen back to the full review which includes albums by Noel Gallagher’s High Flying birds and Bjork on Arena here.
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