Aretha Franklin: Stevie Wonder offers stirring goodbye at memorial service

Mourners including the Rev Al Sharpton, Bill Clinton and Ariana Grande paid tribute to the singer at a service fit for royalty

It was a star-studded and ostentatious “homegoing” fit for royalty: “We will have never known a queen like this,” Stevie Wonder told the gathering of mourners. Aretha Franklin’s funeral service in Detroit on Friday drew some of music’s brightest stars and a sprinkling of political figures for a proper send-off for the “Queen of Soul”.

“What needs to happen today, not only in this nation but throughout the world, is that we need to make love great again,” Wonder said during a eulogy nestled between his performances of The Lord’s Prayer and As. “Because black lives do matter. Because all lives do matter ... That is what Aretha said throughout her life. Though the pain, she gave us the joy, and said, ‘Let’s make love great again.’”

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from US news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2PV0bMf