Let Me in Your Life by Aretha Franklin

Let Me in Your Life, Aretha Franklin's 20th studio album, landed on Atlantic in February 1974 with Jerry Wexler producing, and it finds the Queen of Soul sounding loose, warm and utterly in command. Donny Hathaway sits in on keyboards, lending the grooves a silky, late-night glow.

This is grown-up rhythm and blues, less church-shout than slow burn, with Aretha riding the arrangements rather than wrestling them, then letting fly when a song calls for it. "Until You Come Back to Me (That's What I'm Gonna Do)" is the gem, a smooth, rolling groove she wrings every drop out of. The record went all the way to number one on Billboard's R&B albums chart, threw off 3 hit singles and stopped just shy of the pop top 10 It became one of her best-selling Atlantic albums, and after years out of print it came back on CD through Rhino in 1994.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.