I Say a Little Prayer

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote I Say a Little Prayer for Dionne Warwick, who cut it at Scepter Records in 1967. The lyric follows a woman through an ordinary morning, praying for her lover while she puts on makeup, combs her hair, and catches her bus. The arrangement moves at a brisk clip over a triplet feel, with call and response backing vocals answering Warwick's lead. Released as a single that fall, it reached number 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1967 and number 8 on the R&B Singles chart.

The version most people know arrived a year later. Aretha Franklin recorded the song for her 1968 Atlantic album Aretha Now, with Arif Mardin and Jerry Wexler producing, and her gospel-trained phrasing turned a light pop tune into something heavier and more urgent. Franklin's take became a top ten US pop hit in its own right and outsold Warwick's in several markets. Critics have argued the matter for decades; a 2026 Collider retrospective made the case that Franklin's reading outshines the original, a judgment that tracks with the general consensus.

The song's second life has been long. It scored a key sequence in My Best Friend's Wedding in 1997, in a reggae arrangement by Diana King. The Glee cast recorded it, and that performance mutated into a durable social media dance trend, restaged in October 2026 by Dianna Agron with Ben Platt and Myha'la as talk of a Glee reboot circulated. Pacific Avenue covered it for triple j's Like A Version in 2026, and a Netflix romantic comedy set in San Antonio borrowed the title that same year.

Distinguishing the two releases matters for any discography. Warwick's original is Bacharach-David pop with a soul lilt; Franklin's is soul with gospel in the grain of the voice. The official YouTube uploads belong to Franklin's recording, and no directed promotional video exists for either 1967 or 1968 single. The clips circulating are lyric, audio, and visualizer uploads. [edit]