Word: damningly
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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...
...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...
...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. Most of the album is structured to let Franklin do her trademark thing: sing about making it through heartache with her faith intact...
...Damn it, religion is so beautiful. It’s not just the beauty in the stained glass of churches, the golden domes of mosques or the embroidered Torah scrolls. It’s in the faces of believers, illuminated by a mix of comfort and ecstasy. They are seeing into another world. They belong...
...rare--these days damn near impossible--to see a big-bucks, big-studio production take the kind of chances Ross unselfconsciously takes here. What eventually steals over you as Seabiscuit unfolds is that its New Deal America is a lot better than the one we inhabit--more generous and shyly exuberant, less noxiously self-centered and confident. Maybe that's just a movie illusion. But it wouldn't hurt us--politically, socially, humanly--if we began believing we could re-create that sweet, sustaining dream. --By Richard Schickel