Was für eine großartige Idee: Die New York Times Magazine Autorin Wesley Morris hat ein ganz wunderbares Experiment gemacht. Sie hat in diesem Sommer 150 Alben von Frauen hintereinander gehört, weil ihr aufgefallen war, dass sie hauptsächlich Musik von Männern hört. In Cafés, in Bars, im Taxi: Hauptsächlich Männermusik, schreibt sie. Der Text sensibilisiert nicht nur dafür, was und wen ich selbst höre, sondern man kann seine eigene Playlist reflektieren. 

During these three months, I stamped a lot of records and artists “underrated.” Erykah Badu’s 2008 magnum opus, “New Amerykah Part One (4th World War),” was the most tragically timely and timeless album of any I’ve listened to — and I listened to five by Nina Simone. I also checked to confirm that Janet Jackson might always be our most undervalued pop star. (Yup.) A woman who became pretty good at seeing the state of the world had, by the time of “The Velvet Rope” in 1997, become even better at assessing the state of her art. One I didn’t expect this would apply to is the woman the galaxy knows as the Queen of Soul. Aretha Franklin’s position in the rock-era firmament is unimpeachable. It’s as a vocalist, though — the greatest — not necessarily as an album artist. But “Amazing Grace” is one of the most astonishing recordings of any pop musician doing anything. Franklin did her thing over two days in January 1972 at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in South Central Los Angeles — her thing being a simultaneous rising to the rafters and bringing down the house. The album begins in a state of keyed up anticipation and ends in emotional exhaustion. Franklin innovated a rhythm section. Gospel could be powerfully dirgy. Rarely did it swing. Franklin gave the hymns and spirituals the elastic structure of her pop songs, with plenty of space for her singing to launch its rockets.