The Story Behind Carole King’s “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman”
In the summer of 1967, a chance meeting on a New York sidewalk produced one of the most enduring anthems in American popular music. The song was “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman,” a piece that would forever be associated with Aretha Franklin’s towering voice yet was written by two young white songwriters from the Brill Building world: Carole King and her husband Gerry Goffin. What began as a casual request shouted from a limousine window became a defining statement of emotional rebirth, female empowerment, and musical excellence.
By the mid-1960s, Carole King and Gerry Goffin had already established themselves as one of the most successful songwriting partnerships of the era. Working out of the Brill Building and nearby offices on Broadway, they specialized in crafting concise, emotionally direct pop songs that spoke to the experiences of ordinary young people. Hits such as “Will You Love Me Tomorrow,” “The Loco-Motion,” “Up on the Roof,” and “I’m Into Something Good” had made them industry fixtures. King, born Carol Klein in Brooklyn, handled the music with an instinctive gift for melody and harmonic movement. Goffin, a former chemistry student with a talent for plainspoken poetry, wrote the lyrics. They married young, had two daughters, and maintained a working partnership even as the pressures of the music business and personal life began to strain their marriage.
At the same time, Aretha Franklin was undergoing a profound artistic transformation. After years of recording polished but commercially uneven material for Columbia Records, she signed with Atlantic in 1966. Producer Jerry Wexler, a co-owner of the label and a deep student of African-American musical traditions, encouraged her to lean into the gospel roots that had shaped her as a child singing in her father’s Detroit church. The results were immediate and explosive. Songs like “I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)” and “Respect” established Franklin as the Queen of Soul almost overnight. Wexler understood that sustaining that momentum required exceptional material. He needed songs that could match the intensity of her voice and the depth of her interpretive gifts.
The idea for “Natural Woman” arrived in the most offhand way imaginable. One day in 1967, King and Goffin were walking along Broadway when Wexler’s limousine pulled up beside them. He rolled down the window and called out that he was looking for a major hit for Aretha. “How about writing a song called ‘Natural Woman’?” he asked. Then he drove off. The suggestion was more than a casual title. Wexler later explained that he had been thinking about the concept of the “natural man” in Black American culture—an idea rooted in authenticity, self-possession, and unforced identity—and simply inverted it for Franklin.
King and Goffin returned to their home in New Jersey. After putting their young daughters to bed, they sat down to work. King found the chord progression almost immediately, a graceful, ascending sequence that suggested both longing and arrival. Goffin took the title and began writing from a perspective of feminine vulnerability. The opening lines—“Looking out on the morning rain / I used to feel so uninspired”—captured a quiet despair that many listeners would recognize. The narrator is exhausted by routine and self-doubt until love arrives and restores a sense of purpose and aliveness. “When my soul was in the lost and found / You came along to claim it,” Goffin wrote. The chorus delivered the song’s central declaration with simple, powerful force: “You make me feel like a natural woman.”
They finished the song that same night. The next day they recorded a demo and delivered it to Wexler, who responded with enthusiasm. Days of uncertainty followed as they waited to hear whether Franklin would accept the material. When Wexler finally invited them to the office and played the finished recording, King was left nearly speechless. Franklin had transformed the song. Her version featured a richer arrangement, the gospel-tinged backing vocals of her sisters Erma and Carolyn Franklin, and, above all, a vocal performance of extraordinary range and emotional authority. Where the demo had been intimate and restrained, Franklin’s recording surged with power and conviction. The song was released as a single in 1967 and included on the 1968 album Lady Soul. It reached number eight on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the R&B chart, becoming one of Franklin’s signature performances.
The partnership that produced the song did not last. King and Goffin’s marriage ended not long afterward, though they continued to collaborate occasionally. By 1970 King had moved to Los Angeles, begun performing her own material more consistently, and prepared the album that would redefine her career. Tapestry, released in 1971, included her own version of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman.” King’s interpretation was slower, more intimate, and centered on piano and understated rhythm. It stripped away the orchestral sweep of Franklin’s recording and replaced it with a sense of quiet personal testimony. The album became one of the best-selling records of all time, and King’s version of the song reinforced its status as a standard rather than a one-off hit.
The song’s afterlife has been long and varied. It has been covered by artists ranging from Celine Dion to Mary J. Blige. It has appeared in films, commercials, and television series. Yet the definitive performance for many remains Franklin’s 2015 appearance at the Kennedy Center Honors, when she sang the song in tribute to Carole King. Wearing a full-length fur coat, Franklin walked to the piano, sat down, and delivered a performance of such intensity that it moved King to tears and visibly affected then-President Barack Obama. The moment captured everything the song had come to represent: the power of collaboration across racial and stylistic lines, the ability of a great singer to elevate a well-crafted song into something transcendent, and the enduring appeal of lyrics that speak to the experience of being seen and restored by love.
In 2012, Carole King titled her memoir A Natural Woman, acknowledging the song’s central place in her life and career. The title was apt. The piece that began as a producer’s offhand suggestion had become a touchstone—not only for Franklin’s artistry and King’s songwriting, but for generations of listeners who recognized in its verses a familiar journey from exhaustion to affirmation. More than half a century later, the song continues to resonate because it does something rare: it makes the private experience of emotional awakening feel universal, and it does so with melodic clarity and lyrical honesty that few songs achieve.
The story of “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman” is ultimately a story about the unpredictable alchemy of popular music. A chance encounter, a title suggested in traffic, a night of focused work by two skilled writers, and the interpretive genius of one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century combined to create something larger than any of its individual parts. In that sense, the song itself became a kind of natural force—simple in its origins, profound in its effect, and still capable of making listeners feel newly alive.
About The Author
