Aretha Franklin is all-in when she sings but is now half-stepping when it comes to retirement. The legendary singer told Detroit’s WDIV Local 4 that she’s planning on retiring and is aiming to release an album of original material in September. “This will be my last year,” she told the news station. “I will be recording, but this will be my last year in concert. This is it.”
She added later that it probably won’t be her “last year.”
She’s not retiring completely. She said she will do “some select things, many one a month, for six months out of the year.” But she said her grandchildren are leaving for college and she wants to spend time with them.
As we have learned from such luminary olds as Jay Z, “retirement”is a malleable term among artists. That said, Aretha has been singing and thriving longer than anyone on the SPIN staff has been alive, so if she actually does retire, it’s fine.
