Spirit in the Dark is an album by Aretha Franklin, released in 1970.
It received mostly positive reviews, but was met with middling sales, despite having two hit singles, "Don't Play That Song (You Lied)", which peaked at #1 R&B, #11 on the Hot 100, and "Spirit in the Dark", peaking at #3 R&B and #23 Hot 100, in Billboard magazine.
It was Aretha's first Atlantic album to fall short of Billboard's Top 20, but it is now considered to be one of Aretha's classic Atlantic LPs. In the 1990s, Rhino Records re-issued this recording on compact disc.
Kanye West has sampled the album title song in his "School Spirit", found on the album The College Dropout.
| Professional ratings | |
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| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | link |
| Blender | link |
| Robert Christgau | (A) |
| Rolling Stone | (favorable) link |
Read more about Spirit In The Dark: Track Listing, Personnel, Chart History
Famous quotes containing the words spirit and/or dark:
“Young men are as apt to think themselves wise enough, as drunken men are to think themselves sober enough. They look upon spirit to be a much better thing than experience, which they call coldness. They are but half mistaken; for though spirit without experience is dangerous, experience without spirit is languid and defective.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“You could not tell, and yet it looked as if
The shore was lucky in being backed by cliff,
The cliff in being backed by continent;
It looked as if a night of dark intent
Was coming, and not only a night, an age.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)