Musicians We Lost In 2018

Only a handful of musicians have earned an honorific title — Elvis Presley was The King, Bruce Springsteen is The Boss, and Aretha Franklin was The Queen of Soul. It was a nickname she very much deserved, bringing her soaring and unbelievable voice to the world of contemporary music in the 1960s, leaving it a better place than she found it. Franklin then took the verve of gospel music she honed singing in church and recorded multiple songs of love and empowerment, including "Think," "Chain of Fools," and "Respect," which spoke to the civil rights and feminist movements of the era.

Franklin enjoyed a rare second act, when, after disco made her real soul stylings briefly passé, she returned as a pop singer in the 1980s with huge hits like "Freeway of Love," and her duet with George Michael, "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)." All told, Franklin scored 17 Top 10 hits on the Billboard pop chart, and 20 No. 1s on the R&B end. In 1987, she became the first woman inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and she sang at inauguration festivities for Presidents Carter, Clinton, and Obama. The Queen was quite possibly the best singer ever, and no less an authority than Rolling Stone said as much, placing her at No. 1 on its "100 Greatest Singers of All Time" list in 2008.

Franklin died at her home in Detroit on August 16. According to her publicist, the singer had suffered from advanced pancreatic cancer. She was 76.

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