Freeway of Love
Aretha Franklin
Everything about "Freeway of Love" operates at the level of confident spectacle — the synthesizer fanfare that opens it sounds like an announcement, a declaration that this is mid-1980s pop-soul and it will not apologize for any of it. The production, helmed by Narada Michael Walden, is enormous and bright: punching horns, layered keyboards, a rhythm section built for FM radio and stadium sound systems. Clarence Clemons's saxophone solo is unambiguous joy, broad and sweeping, the kind of playing that exists solely to make people feel large. Aretha Franklin meets all of this with the particular confidence of an artist who doesn't need the production to carry her — she rides it instead, her voice still authoritative and full-bodied, adapting her gospel roots to a sound that could have belonged to anyone but sounds unmistakably like her. The song uses road and travel as metaphors for romantic momentum, for the feeling of going somewhere with someone and not wanting to arrive. This is summer music, highway music, music for when the windows are down and your mood is high enough to match the tempo. It's the sound of an icon operating in a different decade and finding that her essential power translates completely.
fast
1980s
bright, polished, dense
American pop soul
Soul, Pop. 80s Pop Soul. euphoric, celebratory. Maintains bright unstoppable momentum from opening synthesizer fanfare to close without pausing for doubt.. energy 8. fast. danceability 8. valence 9. vocals: powerful female, authoritative, gospel-rooted, confident. production: synthesizer fanfare, layered keyboards, punching horns, FM radio drums, sweeping saxophone. texture: bright, polished, dense. acousticness 1. era: 1980s. American pop soul. Summer highway drive with the windows down when your mood is high enough to match the tempo and you want to feel unstoppable.