Aretha Franklin is planning to say goodbye to the music scene as she announced her retirement this 2017. In an interview with the Detroit TV station WDIV, the Queen of Soul revealed that she will stop making music after the release of her new album.

"This will be my last year," Aretha Franklin said, according to LA Times. Although the 74-year-old hitmaker revealed that she will be recording new music, this will be the last time she will be in concert.

"I feel very, very enriched and satisfied with respect to where my career came from, and where it is now," Aretha Franklin explained. The "I Knew you were Waiting" singer also added that she is now excited in creating her new music and even feels lively to be back in a studio.

Aretha Franklin also described that her upcoming album will be composed of new original songs and would be produced in part by another music icon Stevie Wonder. The songwriter, too, disclosed that hew new album will be a love letter to her hometown, Detroit, IOL reported.

Meanwhile, Aretha Franklin has been known and famous as one of the most influential music artists in pop history. She started singing gospel music in the middle of 1950s before she became singing worldly songs in the early 1960s.

Aretha Franklin was born in Memphis and moved into Detroit at the age of five. The "Respect" hitmaker has a very colorful music career and a lot of accomplishments ever since her very first album, "Songs of Faith," was released in 1956.

In fact, she had more than 20 number one singles in the United States and has won the Grammy Awards for Best R&B Vocal Performance for eight consecutive years, from 1968 to 1975. Aretha Franklin has even become the very first woman inaugurated into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She, too, is awarded by former President George W. Bush with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005.

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Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder