It’s safe to say that Aretha Franklin was not known for her modesty.
After Page Six revealed that Franklin once hired three makeup artists to paint her face for one event, we now hear she had had her own music played during photoshoots, sending her into a reverie of self-appreciation!
Renowned celebrity photographer, and the late Franklin’s personal snapper, Matthew Jordan Smith, recalled to Page Six the first time he shot her in 2005.
Smith remembered he was pumping a playlist on his iPod at the time that included Mariah Carey, when “[Franklin] looked like she wasn’t into it, so I asked her, who was her favorite new artist, and she said, ‘Me!’” he told Page Six.
Perplexed, Smith asked her again with an even stronger emphasis on the word “new,” and Franklin responded the same: “Me!”
The late singer didn’t ask him to change the music. But Smith took it as his queue to add the Queen of Soul’s songs to the mix.
He ended up creating a playlist of his favorite Franklin songs and titled it “Aretha Cool.”
“It was like a light bulb went off… She was lost in her own world and then began to sing,” he said when he started playing her tunes. “I haven’t seen anybody act like that to hearing their own music,” Smith said.
Smith is honoring the “Respect” legend with an upcoming art photo book titled after the playlist. In “Aretha Cool” he writes about how Franklin, “would often begin to sing as I photographed her.”
“One day, as I was taking her photograph, one of my favorite Aretha Franklin songs came on, and as usual, she began to sing along. I was so moved that I began to sing along with her,” he wrote.
“Suddenly she stopped, looked at me, and said, ‘Jordan, baby, don’t sing,’” he added.
Smith photographed Franklin up until her death in 2018, and “played all the same songs throughout those years. She never got tired [of hearing the playlist],” he told us.
The book, “Aretha Cool,” is out March 15. And his playlist can be found on Spotify.
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