Aretha Now

Released on June 14, 1968, Aretha Now was Aretha Franklin's thirteenth studio album and her second consecutive album produced by Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Studios in New York, following the breakthrough of Lady Soul the year before^[1].

The sessions were recorded between December 1967 and April 1968, a stretch that placed the album's completion just weeks after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4, 1968^[2]. The record paired the Muscle Shoals rhythm section with horn charts and arrangements from Tom Dowd and Arif Mardin, and it became commercially one of Franklin's biggest successes, reaching number 3 on the pop albums chart, topping the R&B albums chart, and eventually selling over a million copies in the US^[1].

Critical response at the time was mixed. Rolling Stone's original 1968 review found Franklin "walking a very thin line between progress and regression," arguing the record aimed to be a second Lady Soul but didn't fully sustain itself across repeated listens, even as it praised the album's best moments as some of her finest work^[3]. Later reassessments have been far more favorable: AllMusic awarded it 4.5 stars, and it has since been ranked among Franklin's essential records^[1].

The album produced two top-ten singles, "Think" and "I Say a Little Prayer," and captured Franklin at the height of her creative and commercial powers, even as her personal life, including her marriage to Ted White, was unraveling behind the scenes^[4].