Listen, while Franklin has dozens of famous songs, there’s one in particular that she’s associated with that you will not hear in the series: “Respect.” There’s a simple reason for that - the show could not get the rights to it. I just thought it was a really beautiful moment to sit and sing, and we sang that live on set, and it just felt good.” The sentiment is that there is a place that is not here, that we might not know until we pass on, where you can live on forever, where you never grow old. You can let go of the process and really just feel it. “There’s something about getting into a song that feels really challenging because finally you can let go of the semantics of it. “Aretha has this beautiful way of being able to sing a phrase that should be eight beats long and make it 16, and stretch it out with the breath that she takes,” Erivo explained. While recreating Franklin’s live gospel album Amazing Grace, she performed an abridged version of Franklin’s take on “Never Grown Old.” (Have you HEARD her sing “I’m Here” from The Color Purple? The performance that won her all those awards.) But even Erivo found certain aspects of Franklin’s oeuvre particularly challenging. Enter multi-award winner Erivo, who thankfully has plenty of experience giving her all on a daily basis.
#Jennifer hudson giving myself piano full#
Read on to find out what else to know before tuning in to the season, which will land in full on Hulu on March 25, Franklin’s birthday.īecause Franklin’s voice and musical sense are so intrinsic to her genius, the actor playing the legend had to have her own musical chops. I just continually focused on those moments. “So if I continually repeated to myself, ‘We are telling Aretha Franklin’s story through the lens of Genius,’ let us focus on those moments where she demonstrated her genius as we understand it: Where she alchemized her pain into sonic gold, where she brought different peoples together for a greater good, where she created things that will endure for long past her lifetime, where she did things that people thought, You’re crazy to try that, and she succeeded.
“Say you walk outside and say ‘I’m looking for a dog I’m looking for a cat.’ That’s what you’re going to be focusing on,” Parks said. Picking those moments wasn’t too difficult a task for showrunner Parks. Each era in the eight-episode series, which airs in two-episode blocks over four nights from March 21-24, was specifically chosen to highlight Franklin’s genius. Franklin) and continuing through the many evolutionary phases of her career, it’s not strictly a biography. And while it covers the biggest events in Franklin’s life, beginning with singing in her preacher father’s church ( Courtney B. Helmed by Pulitzer Prize winner Suzan-Lori Parks, Genius: Aretha sees Emmy-, Grammy-, and Tony-winner Cynthia Erivo (one Oscar away from an EGOT) play Franklin throughout the decades of her adulthood, and newcomer Shaian Jordan play Little Re throughout her formative childhood years. this is my world cup album 2014 hope everyone enjoys it.(Photo by National Geographic/Richard DuCree)Īnyone who’s heard Aretha Franklin sing could tell you she’s a genius - but the third season of National Geographic’s Genius, which follows the trajectory of the Queen of Soul’s musical journey from childhood through the various stages of her career, pinpoints exactly how that genius manifested throughout her life. My particular non-favourite is the Jennifer Hudson ballad "Giving Myself", which I like to imagine Wayne weeping silently to under a towel as he prepares for penalties.Īs a sweeping generalisation, footballers tend to prefer softer genres of music, as demonstrated by Juan Mata who tweets soft focus pictures of Beirut album covers.
Rooney posted the playlist on Twitter where he described it as a 'mixed bag', instantly redefining the meaning of eclecticism such is its mawkish banality.Īrtists that the striker will be listening to as he heads to Brazil this summer include Ed Sheeran, The Stereophonics, John Legend, Jake Bugg and Mumford & Sons.
Wayne Rooney has picked a selection of tracks on Spotify to get him fired up for the 2014 World Cup, including the always motivational "Goodbye My Lover" by James Blunt and the ever training montage-ready "Blower's Daughter" by Damien Rice.