Aretha Franklin‘s ’Think‘

A Reason To Smile

Credit: Getty Images

With a little more than two weeks until the most important presidential election of our lives, we wanted to inspire the Steady community to get out and vote! To do so we are turning to one of Kamala Harris’s favorite artists as our reason to smile.

Harris has said she grew up in a house where music was always playing, and Aretha Franklin was among the singers who made up the soundtrack of her childhood. 

Harris has said she and her sister would dance around their living room to Franklin’s incredible vocals. “My mother had every Aretha album,” Harris told running mate Tim Walz. “Our Christmas gift to my mother — her birthday gift — was always like what’s the latest Aretha Franklin record.”

One of those records was “Aretha Now,” released in 1968. The first single was the rollicking “Think.”

The song, written by Franklin and Ted White, was a big hit at the time. Then “Think” had a second life in 1980 when it was featured in the movie “The Blues Brothers.” Franklin had a part in the film and performed the song.

One of Harris’s big campaign themes is freedom. The bridge, where Franklin sings about it like it is a hymn, is a reminder of what is at stake on November 5.

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Stay Steady,
Dan