Songoftheday 3/24/21 - She was a pretty sweet thing not the least bit insecure, then you came with your slick game and played with her youth...
"A Rose Is Still A Rose" - Aretha Franklin
from the album A Rose Is Still A Rose (1998)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #26 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 9
Today's song of the day comes from the iconic singer Aretha Franklin, who had returned to the pop top 40 in America after a five year gap in the summer of 1994 with "Willing To Forgive". That was from her Greatest Hits 1980-1994 collection on Arista Records, but it would be a good seven years since her previous studio album before Aretha re-emerged with a new release in 1998. Label exec Clive Davis set her up at her request, like he would do soon (and with bigger returns) with Carlos Santana, with younger producers and artists that were thriving in the R&B field in the 1990s, like Sean "Puff Daddy" Combs, Jermaine Dupri, and Babyface protege Daryl Simmons. But the star of the show taking charge of the lead single and title track from Franklin's 34th release was Lauryn Hill, formerly of the Fugees and soon to take off herself as a solo artist. "A Rose Is Still A Rose", was written and produced by Hill with an inserted interpolation of Edie Brickell's top ten alt-rock hit "What I Am", which gave Edie and co-writer Kenny Withrow wiring credit. A timeless-sounding gospel-like song, the production gave the legend a fresh musical backdrop to work with, as she describes a girl done wrong by a bad man, and counsels her to pick herself up, as she had to do herself. It's the type of lyrical phrasing only a veteran like Aretha can deliver believably, and Hill makes sure the midtempo groove gives a current-sounding foundation that doesn't get in the way of Franklin's powerfully instructive delivery...
"A Rose Is Still A Rose" became Aretha's 43rd and final top-40 pop hit in May of 1998. The song rose to #5 on Billboard magazine's R&B chart, while the dance remixes of the track, done by the likes of Love To Infinity and Hex Hector, helped it top the Dance Club Play list for a week. Internationally, the single was a top-40 hit in the UK (#22) and Iceland (#35). The A Rose Is Still A Rose album, released in March of that year, made it into the top-40 at #30 on the Billboard 200 sales list, while cresting at #7 on the R&B specific tally, going on to sell over a half million copies of both the album and the single. At the Grammy Awards in 1999, Franklin was nominated for both Best R&B Album and Best R&B Vocal Performance, losing both to Lauryn Hill for The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill and "Doo Wop (That Thing)" respectively.
The second single from A Rose Is Still A Rose was the Dupri-produced "Here We Go Again", which ironically samples her collaborator from the 1980s Luther Vandross' old band Change's "The Glow Of Love". The single made the R&B top-40 at #24 while stalling down at #76 on the pop Hot 100 (and #68 in England). However again the dance remixes of the track, along with Franklin's iconic status in the LGBT community, scored a second consecutive #1 on the Dance Club Play list. The following year, Aretha earned another Grammy nomination for her collab with Mary J. Blige on the latter's "Don't Waste Your Time" track from the Mary album (which went to TLC for "No Scrubs").
Franklin came back in 2003 with So Damn Happy, which veered back towards the older-skewing urban soul of her recent past. While pop radio left it alone, and both its singles missing the top-40 on Billboard's R&B chart, the lead offering "The Only Thing Missin'" was also promoted to the clubs, where she landed another top ten Dance hit at #7. Also, she came through at the Grammy Awards, winning the Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance award for "Wonderful", while being up for Best R&B Album again (which Vandross took home for his Dance With My Father set). She won the former award again in 2006 with her rendition of "A House Is Not A Home" from a Vandross tribute album. A final release on Arista Records, Jewels In The Crown, which collected older duets with a few new pairings, featured a song with American Idol winner Fantasia, "Put You Up On Game", which just missed the R&B top-40 by a notch at #41, while her version of Bryan Adams' (!) "Never Gonna Break My Faith" with Mary J. Blige and the Harlem Boys Choir gave the singer her last Grammy for Best Gospel Performance.
After a single indie album under her own label, Aretha signed with RCA (and Clive Davis) for one more record, Aretha Franklin Sings The Diva Classics. Her cover of Adele's "Rolling In The Deep" went to #47 on Billboard's R&B Songs chart, while the club mixes returned her to #1 on their Dance Club Play list in 2014. Sadly, that would be her last studio set; Franklin passed away in 2018. But her mark on American music will never flicker out; she remains and will always be THE Queen Of Soul.
(9/10)
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And this is one of the remixes of the record, by the Love To Infinity team, that brought the single to #1 on Billboard's dance chart...
Lastly, this is her performance on the Divas Live program...
Up tomorrow: R&B singer wants to take a trip.
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