♫ You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman ♫ (Redux)

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, History, music

I love this song … love the tune, the lyrics, and most of all Aretha Franklin!  It’s been a busy day and I’m too tired to start from scratch tonight, so let’s enjoy this one that I last played a few years ago (2019, I believe).

This was written by Gerry Goffin and Carole King. They were a married couple who helped shape the Brill Building sound, named for the famous building in New York City where many hits from the ’60 were written and recorded.

Regarding the origins of this song, in 2008 Ode Records owner Lou Adler, who worked closely with King and Goffin remembers …

“Last year I spoke to Jerry Wexler at his home in Florida, and he told me the story that Gerry was coming out of a building in New York, (Goffin now remembers it as an Oyster House), and Jerry Wexler is passing in a car, and yells out, ‘Why don’t you write a song called ‘Natural Woman’?’ They felt the title was so distinct and so important to the song that they gave him a piece of it. So, when I spoke to Jerry recently to call him on his 90th birthday, he said, ‘Isn’t it amazing what those kids gave me? The checks keep coming in and I’m really happy about it.’ Knowing how much he added to the song, not really as a third writer but the title and the inspiration of what was to be, a great song.”

The version I’m playing tonight is from 2015 when Aretha performed the song in a tribute to Carole King at the 2015 Kennedy Center Honors where she literally brought the house down.  In attendance were then-President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle.

Ms. Franklin would die some three years later, on 06 August 2018, and the world lost one of the greatest singers of all time, at least in this writer’s opinion.

(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman
Aretha Franklin

Looking out on the morning rain
I used to feel so uninspired
And when I knew I had to face another day
Lord, it made me feel so tired
Before the day I met you, life was so unkind
But you’re the key to my peace of mind

‘Cause you make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like
A natural woman (woman)

When my soul was in the lost and found
You came along to claim it
I didn’t know just what was wrong with me
‘Til your kiss helped me name it
Now I’m no longer doubtful, of what I’m living for
And if I make you happy I don’t need to do more

‘Cause you make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like
A natural woman (woman)

Oh, baby, what you’ve done to me (what you’ve done to me)
You make me feel so good inside (good inside)
And I just want to be, close to you (want to be)
You make me feel so alive

You make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like
A natural woman (woman)

You make me feel
You make me feel
You make me feel like a natural woman (woman)

You make me feel
You make me feel

Songwriters: Gerry Goffin / Carole King / Jerry Wexler
(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

26 thoughts on “♫ You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman ♫ (Redux)”

  3. Jill, I read Carole King’s biography which echoes that story. She noted her husband wrote the lyrics to “Natural Woman” and he really captured the ambience. Keith

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  4. I’m glad she finally decided she was staying and took her coat off. This is probably heresy, but I prefer Carole King’s original version, which came without all her histrionics here!

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      • I would love to be alive 100 years from now just to see what does stand the rest of time and is considered antique music. It may become like the way we enjoy folk and nursery rhymes today.

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        • I don’t have any desire to stick around for another 100 years, but I have long said I’d love to drop back in 100 years from now and see if humanity survives or not! I’m afraid to even think of what new music would exist 100 years from now, but I do think there are some keepers from our generation(s) that would survive the test of time.

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