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Aretha Franklin sings Rolling in the Deep.
There is so much to say about this.
I found the studio version too.
For one thing? This is not an Adele song. This is an Aretha Franklin song. There are two songs called Rolling in the Deep and they have a lot of lyrics in common but one is an Adele song and the other is an Aretha song.
Adele's version is deeply bitter. It's, "Fuck you, I hurt." Aretha's version is angry but not bitter. It's, "Fuck you, and you're gonna be sorry."
(The Aretha version shifts into Ain't No Mountain High Enough which, oddly, also transforms that song from joyful declaration of love to gleeful promise of destruction.)
Adele version, for comparison.
The video for Adele's version is also brilliant, but that's not all of why I personally respond a lot more strongly to Adele's.
(The video is so good, though.)
There's a sort of joke-not-a-joke about Adele being music to cry to. A couple of her songs, though, are very Killing Me Softly for me - there's almost an anger to it, like how dare she sing my pain like this, it's mine, who gave her the right to perform it in public like that?
Those songs, specifically, are Rolling in the Deep and Set Fire to the Rain.
So, yeah, I have many feelings.
But there's also the more... abstract part of this:
That the bones of this song were good enough to be an Adele song or an Aretha song.
That I really want to know what Aretha Franklin thought when she heard Adele's version, that she knew she could do this with it.
The album's called Aretha Franklin Sings The Great Diva Classics and I want it because this is fascinating.
I can't say I'm a huge Aretha Franklin fan - I have due respect (ha) and admiration for her skill and her accomplishments, but the influence of her work on my life is largely less direct - she was adored by and hugely influential upon the artists who followed her. (For example, Freddie Mercury thought she was amazing.)
I still want that album now.
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