According to Consequence Of Sound, soul icon Aretha Franklin has announced that she’s going to retire from performing live concerts by the end of this year. “This will be my last year,” she told a Detroit radio station, adding, “I will be recording, but this will be my last year in concert. This is it.”
She says she feels “very, very enriched and satisfied” with where her career came from and where it has gone, and she’ll be “pretty much satisfied” when it’s over. Still, she’s “not going to go anywhere and just sit down and do nothing,” because “that wouldn’t be good either.” Franklin says she’s working on a studio album of original music with Stevie Wonder, and Consequence Of Sound notes that she has concerts booked through June. That means she’ll be sticking around until at least this summer, if not a little longer.