Milestones: Spirit in the Dark by Aretha Franklin
Spirit in the Dark earns its place not just as a great Aretha Franklin album, but as an American soul masterpiece that continues to testify to the unity of the human experience.
In the sweltering summer of 1970, Aretha Franklin assembled a band for the ages to help bring her seventeenth album, Spirit in the Dark, to life. On lead guitar was a young Duane Allman, whose soaring electric slide riffs added a fiery edge—the virtuoso was just a year away from founding the Allman Brothers Band (and tragically, a year away from his untimely death). Anchoring the sessions behind him was the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, a crack team of Alabama studio musicians who’d cut their teeth providing deep-pocket grooves for soul classics by Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge. And lifting their voices behind Aretha was a gospel-honed trio of backing singers, Almeda Lattimore, Margaret Branch, and Aretha’s cousin Brenda Bryant, whose harmonies could swell like a Mississippi tent revival choir, answering the Queen’s calls with sanctified vehemence. It was an extraordinary lineup: a fusion of Southern rock virtuosity, Southern soul muscle, and church-trained vocal power, all gathered to support one woman’s vision. At the center of it all sat Aretha Franklin herself, 28 years old and already crowned the “Queen of Soul,” at the piano with a commanding, church-born touch. She opens more than half the tracks on Spirit in the Dark with that piano, a rolling thunder of gospel-blues chords that immediately establishes her as both bandleader and preacher in her chapel of soul.
Listening to Spirit in the Dark today, over half a century later, one can still feel the electricity and communion in those grooves. “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied)” kicks off with her thumping out chords on the keys, as if she’s calling her congregation to order. It’s easy to forget, because her phenomenal voice often draws all the attention, that Aretha was a formidable pianist in her own right, shaped by years of playing in her father’s Detroit church. Here, she proves she can hang with and even lead the top-notch players around her. Throughout, that marriage of the spiritual and the soulful is underlined by Aretha’s keyboard work, which gives the album its backbone. In these sessions, if Aretha Franklin was the queen, she was an undisputed bandleader-queen, coaxing inspired performances out of every musician around her.
That bond between band and singer is felt immediately, but this truly distinguishes itself in how it blurs the lines between sacred and secular at every turn. Franklin was hardly the first artist to bring gospel intensity into popular music—Ray Charles and Sam Cooke had famously crossed that bridge before—but unlike Cooke, who largely left gospel behind when he went pop, Aretha refused to separate the two realms. Take “You and Me,” a tender original ballad that Aretha wrote herself. On the surface, it can be heard as a simple love song addressed to a partner, pledging devotion. Yet the phrasing and earnestness of Aretha’s performance give it the character of a hymn; one can easily imagine she’s singing to the Lord as much as to a lover. In Aretha’s hands, “You and Me” becomes either an ode to monogamous love or a devotional prayer, or both at once. The same could be said for the album’s ecstatic title track, “Spirit in the Dark.” Set to a percolating, funky groove, “Spirit in the Dark” finds Aretha imploring everyone to “get religion” on the dance floor. She testifies over a call-and-response vamp, asking, “Are you gettin’ the spirit?” as the rhythm builds to a frenzy. Is she talking about the Holy Ghost or the intoxicating rush of music (or even physical release)? The genius of the song is that it feels like both a gospel revival and a rafter-shaking secular celebration of joy; the sacred ecstasy and the carnal abandon are indistinguishable. Aretha’s voice soars with what could be religious excitation or pure sensual excitement, blurring any distinction between worship and pleasure.
And then there’s “Try Matty’s,” one of the album’s most delightful surprises. The track barrels along with all the uptempo glee of a gospel hymn—handclaps, a bouncing groove, call-and-response shouts—and if you weren’t listening closely, you might mistake it for a traditional church number. In fact, Franklin is joyfully singing the praises of a barbecue joint (Yes, that Matty’s—a local eatery so beloved that decades later a Boston DJ even used this song as a radio jingle.). This fearless blending of church and street, of Sunday morning and Saturday night, is one of the album’s enduring triumphs. In 1970, it was still somewhat daring; Franklin’s roots were in gospel, a realm where crossing over to secular R&B was sometimes met with scorn. But Aretha had long since proved that soul itself was born from the sanctified soil of gospel, and on Spirit in the Dark she doubles down on that philosophy. If there’s a single tour-de-force moment where all these themes coalesce, it might be Aretha’s stunning reimagining of “The Thrill Is Gone (From Yesterday’s Kiss).” This song, placed as the second track, is a centerpiece of the album’s emotional arc. Not to be confused with B.B. King’s famous blues of almost the same name, Aretha’s “The Thrill Is Gone” is something of a hybrid: it takes the bones of the Roy Hawkins/Rick Darnell blues tune (which King had turned into a hit in 1969) and transforms it into a deep soul lament of Franklin’s own design.
But Aretha Franklin is never one to wallow without also fighting back. About three and a half minutes into the track, she stages a remarkable transformation. The rhythm section starts to swell, and a choir of voices—that tent-revival trio—rises up behind her. Suddenly, out of the depths of sorrow, Aretha’s backing singers quote a line straight from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Thank God almighty, I’m free at last!” It’s a goosebump moment, a surprise jolt of triumphant gospel in the middle of a blues ballad. In that instant, the song explodes from a personal lament into a spiritual emancipation. Aretha seizes on the line and turns it into a refrain, as if breaking the chains of her heartbreak then and there. The genius of this interpolation is how it deepens the song’s meaning. By invoking Dr. King’s famous words (from his “I Have a Dream” speech) within the context of a breakup song, Aretha equates the emotional wreckage of failed romance with a collective yearning for freedom. Aretha’s voice climbs in intensity, the organ and guitars answer her, and the drums kick up a notch. What began as a mournful blues has morphed into a sanctified celebration of liberation, not only liberation from a bad love, but perhaps liberation from deeper wounds. The last minute of “The Thrill Is Gone” feels like church. Aretha ad-libs reverent moans and hallelujah phrases, the backing voices clap and respond, and the groove finds a righteous stride.
Remarkably, the goodbyes and reckonings on Spirit in the Dark don’t stop with that triumph. The album continues to navigate the complex terrain of loss and hope in its later tracks. Take “One Way Ticket,” another original song Aretha penned. On the surface, its brisk tempo and major-key melody give it an upbeat, almost optimistic sheen; this is one of the album’s ostensibly “happy” tunes. But listen to the lyrics, and a bittersweet story unfolds. “Like the dew on the mountain,” Aretha sings in a lilting voice, “like the foam on the sea, like the bubbles on a fountain—you’re gone forever from me.” “Pullin’” is one of the album’s standout tracks (Aretha’s favorite, perhaps, since she often cited it) and a family affair: it was co-written by her younger sister Carolyn Franklin (along with songwriter Jimmy Radcliffe and Aretha herself). Carolyn Franklin, a talented singer-songwriter in her own right, imbued “Pullin’” with a spirit of defiant euphoria despite its roots in romantic disappointment. Tragically, Carolyn would pass away from cancer in 1988 at just 43 years old, which lends the song an extra layer of poignancy now. But in 1970, “Pullin’” was a fresh burst of energy and emotion.
Once again, it all starts with Aretha’s piano. The track opens with her at the keys, laying down a bluesy, gospel-tinged riff that immediately establishes a testifying mood. One can imagine her in the church of Aretha, setting the scene for a spiritual throwdown. She begins to sing, her melody full of swoops and hollers like a gospel soloist, and almost immediately her backup singers answer. It’s call-and-response, the oldest church musical dialogue, now employed to exorcise the demons of a failed relationship. With each verse and chorus, the intensity builds. Aretha calls, the trio responds; she calls again, they respond louder. The track becomes a frenzied conversation—not just between Aretha and the backups, but between Aretha and some higher power, between the pain in her heart and the joy she’s determined to reach. It’s as if she’s physically pulling herself up out of sorrow, each “Harder! Higher!” taking her a notch above the earth. The groove by now is hectic—the Muscle Shoals rhythm section (or perhaps the Dixie Flyers on this cut) play as if possessed by the Holy Spirit of soul. The guitar hits ecstatic fills, the drums gallop, the bass thumps relentlessly. The music threatens to careen off the rails, a delirious crescendo of exaltation. Just when it feels like the whole thing might spin into chaos, Aretha gives a final burst of vocal fireworks—ad-libbing runs that sound half like sobs, half like shouts of joy—and then, bang, the band stops on a dime.
Intimate heartbreak and collective longing entwine like twin threads in an embroidery. Aretha Franklin pours her personal trials into these grooves; the album was recorded in the wake of great upheaval in her life. In 1968, she had endured the assassination of her close family friend, Martin Luther King Jr., singing at his funeral as tears fell for the nation. By 1969, she had separated from her husband and manager, Ted White, a turbulent and sometimes abusive presence in her life. She was a single mother again, carrying on with her career under immense pressure and scrutiny. All of that pain, liberation, and longing for freedom found its way into the music. Spirit in the Dark doesn’t explicitly spell out these biographical details, but they are the undercurrent—what one writer called the album’s “essential ache” as a Black woman clamoring for freedom and dignity. At the same time, Aretha was channeling something larger than herself: the collective spirit of Black America and the church. The late 1960s were a time of unrest and hope, of revolution and revival. Franklin’s music had always drawn from the well of gospel righteousness and civil-rights-era urgency (her anthem “Respect” in 1967 cemented her as a voice of empowerment).
On Spirit in the Dark, she marries Black popular music and sacred tradition more completely than ever, creating songs that speak to individual love and loss but also to a broader hunger for salvation, whether salvation comes in the form of romantic deliverance or social justice or simple spiritual ecstasy. Aretha does this without ever diluting either side of the equation. The album’s gospel elements are not watered down to appease pop listeners, nor are the R&B grooves compromised to sound overtly pious. Instead, Aretha finds the common essence of both: the raw, real emotion that underlies a great R&B love song and a great gospel hymn alike. This is a woman who, as a child, learned to sing and play piano in Reverend C.L. Franklin’s (her father) New Bethel Baptist Church in Detroit, a church so spirited that parishioners would reportedly faint from the religious love. She grew up watching the intertwining of the spiritual and secular, with gospel singers and blues musicians gathering in her family home after hours, revealing to her young eyes how Saturday-night sin and Sunday-morning repentance were often two sides of the same coin. She fully claims that dual heritage. She demonstrates that a soul album could carry the weight of gospel truth, and a gospel sensibility could ignite even songs about everyday life and love. In doing so, Aretha proved herself not just the indisputable Queen of Soul but a fearless musical visionary.
The power of Spirit in the Dark remains undiminished. Drop the needle (or hit play) on this album today, and it can still move you to your core. Whether you come to it seeking solace for love lost, strength for freedom found, or simply the transcendent beauty of Aretha’s singing and playing, the record delivers. There is a timelessness in how Aretha communicates emotion – she digs so deep that her pain and joy become universal. When she testifies on the title track or “Pullin’,” it’s impossible not to feel the spirit right along with her. When she aches on “The Thrill Is Gone” or “One Way Ticket,” it’s a reminder that heartbreak is deeply personal and part of the shared human experience. The album also stands as a testament to Aretha’s insistence on being true to herself. In the crossroads between the sacred and secular, she found her lane, and it turned out to be a highway on which generations of artists would follow. From gospel-imbued soul singers to rock bands seeking some church fire, the influence of Aretha’s approach on Spirit in the Dark is profound. Yet nobody has ever quite replicated what she achieves here. This album is singular in Aretha’s canon: it’s not as commercially famous as I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You or Lady Soul, but many argue it is the purest distillation of Aretha Franklin’s art and principles. It’s the album where she most fully inhabits both roles of preacher and pop star, blurring them until they’re one and the same.
Half a century later, Spirit in the Dark earns its place not just as a great Aretha Franklin album, but as an American soul masterpiece that continues to testify to the unity of the human experience. It’s an album that reminds us that sorrow and joy, secular and sacred, body and spirit are all entwined. And it’s an album that showcases Aretha Franklin in full command of her gifts—the Queen of Soul, yes, but also a visionary musician unafraid to follow her spirit wherever it led. Why does she sing the blues? Why does she sing at all? Because through singing, she finds freedom. Through music, she turns darkness into light. Spirit in the Dark still shines with that freedom and light, an electrifying beacon for any generation ready to feel its glow.
Masterpiece (★★★★★)