Aretha Franklin / Soul Queen / 1994
Something He Can Feel
tender defiance building into euphoric insistence
A woman in a hard-pressed neighborhood insists that her devotion to her man is proof against the world's skepticism, turning a simple domestic claim into an anthem of vindication. The song builds from a tender, almost defensive verse into a repeated, chant-like assertion of physical and emotional realness, with the title phrase functioning as both promise and mantra.
romantic devotion as proof poverty and resilience female desire and agency doubt versus certainty sensuality as testimony
Who's speaking
A first-person female narrator addresses both her lover directly and an implied skeptical public, asserting her legitimacy as a woman in love; she reads as fully reliable, her repetition functioning as conviction rather than uncertainty.
What happens
The song opens with the narrator pushing back against people who doubt her maturity or sincerity, promising that time will prove her love genuine. It then locates that love within a specific social setting — a rough, tense environment where outsiders assume something must be wrong. She insists nothing is, because what she has with her man sustains her. The middle section shifts to hope and doubt about whether love and material stability can coexist, before the song abandons argument altogether and dissolves into ecstatic repetition of the central claim, ending in near-wordless vocal exclamation.
How it's built
Loose verse-chorus form that gradually erodes into vamp and repetition; the second half essentially abandons narrative verses for extended call-and-response ad-libs, mirroring the shift from explaining love to simply performing it.
Section by section
Opening verse
“that I'm too young”
The song begins defensively, with the narrator anticipating dismissal of her feelings as immature or unfounded. This framing establishes love as something that must be argued for, not simply felt.
Ghetto-life verse
The setting shifts to a tense, watchful community where the narrator's happiness itself becomes suspect. By insisting nothing is wrong, she turns her private contentment into a small act of resistance against an environment that expects struggle rather than joy.
First chorus
The title phrase arrives as the song's thesis: love is validated not through words but through something felt, physically and emotionally. The chorus functions as testimony aimed outward at anyone doubting her.
Bridge
A brief moment of introspection appears, questioning whether love and material security can coexist outside of dreams. This is the song's only real hesitation, quickly folded back into the reaffirmation of the chorus.
Extended outro/vamp
The song abandons argument for sheer repetition and vocal ecstasy, with the narrator and background voices trading the central phrase until it becomes less a statement than a shared experience. The dissolution into ad-libs enacts the very 'feeling' the lyric describes.
Craft
- anaphora
- The repeated framing device of insisting something is 'alright' and reasserting the central claim about giving him something tangible reinforces the song's rhetorical function as persuasion through repetition rather than description.
- synecdoche
- Physical sensation stands in for emotional authenticity throughout — the abstract idea of real love is reduced to something felt, collapsing the distance between bodily pleasure and sincerity.
- apostrophe
- The narrator alternates between addressing her lover directly and addressing an unspecified public, which lets the song function simultaneously as intimate declaration and social rebuttal.
Reading it
The most persuasive reading treats the song as a defense of romantic and sexual legitimacy within a community quick to interpret happiness as naivety or trouble in disguise — the narrator's insistence on realness is partly a rebuttal to outside judgment. An alternative reading focuses less on social context and more on desire itself: the escalating repetition suggests the song is less about proving love to others than about the narrator losing herself in the feeling, with the outro's near-collapse into wordless vocalizing enacting climax rather than argument.
Context
This song was written by Curtis Mayfield for the 1976 film Sparkle, and Aretha Franklin's original recording appeared on the Sparkle soundtrack, produced by Mayfield himself, blending soul with the socially aware, ghetto-conscious lyricism typical of his work. The 1994 'Soul Queen' listing appears to be a compilation or reissue rather than a new recording, so the specific production context for that release is uncertain based on available information. The song was later popularized in a different arrangement by the group En Vogue in 1992, which likely shapes many listeners' familiarity with the title even though Franklin's version predates it.
Listen for
- the shift from careful, defensive verses to unstructured vocal repetition
- the tension between the mention of hardship and the insistence that everything is fine
- Franklin's vocal ad-libs functioning as the emotional climax rather than any lyrical resolution
- the recurring title phrase acting almost like a chant or incantation by the song's end
About Aretha Franklin
Aretha Louise Franklin was an American singer, songwriter and pianist. Regarded as the "Queen of Soul", she was twice named by Rolling Stone magazine as the greatest singer of all time.
1942 - 2018 / United States
Full biography and catalogue