Young, Gifted and Black

Franklin's eighteenth studio album came out in early 1972 on Atlantic. It reached number 2 on the R&B albums chart and number 11 on the main chart, and was quickly certified gold. It won her the 1972 Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. The title comes from Nina Simone's To Be Young, Gifted and Black. Day Dreaming, Rock Steady, All the King's Horses, I've Been Loving You Too Long and First Snow in Kokomo were recorded at Criteria Studios in Miami, with Ron Albert, Howard Albert and Chuck Kirkpatrick engineering.

The record mixes her own songs, such as Day Dreaming and Rock Steady, with covers of Otis Redding, the Beatles and Elton John. Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone called her The Long and Winding Road the greatest of all Beatle covers in 2018. AllMusic's Jason Birchmeier wrote that you would be hard-pressed to find any throwaways. VH1 named it the 76th greatest album of all time in 2003, and Rolling Stone placed it at 388 in 2020.