Day Dreaming

“Day Dreaming” is a soul single by American singer Aretha Franklin. Released from her album Young, Gifted and Black, it spent 2 weeks at the top of the Hot Soul Singles chart in April 1972 and peaked at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #11 on the Easy Listening singles chart. Billboard ranked it as the #61 song for 1972.

Donny Hathaway plays electric piano on the song and Hubert Laws plays the flute. The single version omits the jazzy daydream-like music heard at the beginning and the ending of the track on the album, because the vocals sounded too psychedelic for most radio airplay. It had been rumored the song was about Temptations’ singer Dennis Edwards, which was confirmed by Franklin in 1999 on The Oprah Winfrey Show. It would be her 12th #1 soul single while at Atlantic Records and sold more than 1 million copies.