The third Aretha catalog exploitation of the fall is the first from Sony/BMG, which has long since deleted the Eighties and Nineties Aretha albums where half of its sixteen tracks first appeared, and it's also the best. But this isn't to accuse it of coherence or anything. Some of it has been previously recycled — ;the Annie Lennox so endlessly we need not name it here, the Keith Richards "Jumpin' Jack Flash" as a bonus cut for a greatest-hits collection initially baited with the merely adequate Bonnie Raitt-Gloria Estefan "Natural Woman." Some of it is lively if expedient (George Michael, Elton John). Some of it is bland (George Benson) or dismal (Frank Sinatra, though only his part). And there are three "newly recordeds," the prize featuring not Mary J. Blige or John Legend but Fantasia, whom the Queen indulges as the naive young thing she is — and who will never make one of these in her life.

“(We're Not) The Jet Set”

George Jones and Tammy Wynette were still married when they recorded the tongue-in-cheek "(We're Not) The Jet Set." The lyrics, written by Nashville songwriter Bobby Braddock, who also penned Wynette's "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today," make fun of the good life by declaring, "We're not the Jet Set/We're the old Chevrolet set." Braddock recalled that while writing the song, he needed the name of a city that evened out the rhyme he had with "Riviera" and "Missourah." “I got out a Rand McNally atlas," he said. "In the first part are the maps. The last part is an alphabetical listing of cities. I wanted a rustic, small-time sound. I went to the listing for Missouri. And I found 'Festus.' I loved the sound of it."