I Say a Little Prayer: The Warm-Up That Became a Soul Classic

By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-06-27

I Say a Little Prayer was written by the great songwriting team of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, and first became a hit for Dionne Warwick in 1967. So when Aretha Franklin recorded her version the following year, she was covering a song that already belonged to someone else — and, as she so often did, she made it hers.

An accidental classic

The charming part of the story is how casual its creation reportedly was. Franklin’s version is said to have grown out of an informal studio warm-up with her backing singers, the Sweet Inspirations — the kind of loose, joyful run-through that wasn’t even necessarily meant to be the main event. That relaxed, conversational interplay between Aretha’s lead and the singers’ responses is exactly what gives the recording its irresistible, lived-in warmth.

When the cover rivals the original

It became so beloved that, for many listeners, it stands alongside or even above Warwick’s original — a rare feat, given how definitive Bacharach and David’s songs tended to be in their first incarnations. It’s another entry in Aretha’s remarkable record of taking songs and reshaping them so completely that they seem to have been waiting for her all along.

What it measures like

On our measurements it’s bright, warm and mid-tempo — buoyant, joyful soul carried by the call-and-response between voices. Full profile on its song page.

I Say a Little Prayer was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David and first a hit for Dionne Warwick (1967); Aretha Franklin’s beloved version followed in 1968. The account of its casual origin is widely repeated. No lyrics are reproduced.