Aretha Franklin – (You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman

Jerry Wexler Shouted It From A Limo Window. Carole King Wrote It That Night. Aretha Made It Eternal.

The title of “(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman” was born on a New York City street corner from a shouted request out of a moving car window. Lyricist Gerry Goffin was leaving the Oyster House on Broadway one evening when a limousine pulled up alongside him. Inside was Jerry Wexler, head of Atlantic Records, who called out: “I’m looking for a really big hit for Aretha — how about writing a song called ‘Natural Woman’?” Goffin went home, told Carole King, and by morning they had one of the greatest songs ever written. Aretha was already performing it live before the studio single had even been pressed.

Atlantic released the single in September 1967, and it hit number eight on the Billboard Hot 100, reaching number two on Billboard’s R&B chart. The song entered the UK chart a week after Franklin’s death in 2018, finally charting at number 79 almost 51 years after its original release — a haunting testament to how deeply the public was mourning. In 1999, Aretha’s recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, and it sits at number 90 on Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

The writing partnership behind the song was an unlikely one on paper. Goffin and King were both white and Jewish, raised in middle-class Brooklyn; Franklin had grown up in Detroit as the daughter of a gospel preacher whose sermons commanded fees that rivalled pop stars. They never met Aretha before writing it — the song was built entirely from imagination, instinct, and a single title shoutted through a car window. In gratitude for the idea, Goffin and King gave Wexler a co-writing credit — the royalty cheques have been coming ever since.

Aretha recorded it at Atlantic’s New York studios shortly after the productive but turbulent FAME sessions in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with Spooner Oldham on piano, Tommy Cogbill on bass, and Gene Chrisman on drums. Backing vocals were provided by the Sweet Inspirations — which included Cissy Houston, Whitney Houston’s mother — alongside Aretha’s own sisters Carolyn and Erma Franklin. When King was finally invited in to hear the finished master, she was left speechless. She later wrote that anyone who had ever hoped a song would be performed at the highest possible level of emotional excellence would have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin.

“(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman” appeared on Lady Soul, Franklin’s landmark 1968 album — the same record that cemented her reign as the Queen of Soul. The live version captured on July 6, 1967 predates the studio release by nearly three months, proof that Aretha trusted the song completely before the world had even heard it. Lady Soul is now widely considered one of the greatest albums in American music history.

Carole King later recorded her own version for the landmark 1971 album Tapestry, a personal reckoning that gave the song an entirely different emotional weight. In 1998, Franklin, King, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan and Shania Twain performed it together at the VH1 Divas concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York. In 2015, at the Kennedy Center Honors ceremony celebrating Carole King, Franklin performed it live, reducing President Obama to visible tears.

Obama said of her: “American history wells up when Aretha sings.” No song proved that more completely than this one — written overnight by two people who had never met the woman who would take it somewhere neither of them could have imagined. The live recording from July 6, 1967 is a reminder that greatness doesn’t wait for release dates.