*Earlier this week, the internet ran wild after a fake Twitter account announced the death of Aretha Franklin.
As noted by Madame Noire, it all started “when a fake Aretha Franklin Twitter account that only has 129 followers and two tweets total, managed to garner more than 2,000 retweets and 15,000 mentions after posting ‘It Is With Sad News That We Announce the Passing Of The ‘Queen Of Soul’ Aretha Franklin 1942-2017.’“
Eventually, Franklin’s team were contacted by media, including entertainment reporter Shaun Robinson and Roland Martin, and refuted rumors of her passing, saying instead that she was doing fine.
“Good Morning, Everyone. I just spoke to one of Ms. Franklin’s family friends in my hometown of Detroit,” Robinson tweeted. “They spoke to Aretha moments ago and asked me to tell you please don’t believe this news that was trending. Have a good day.”
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Franklin also has finally spoken out about the rumors, including speculation about her health due to her weight loss. A brief statement emailed to Us Weekly said:
“I’m doing well generally, all test have come back good,” Franklin said. “I’ve lost a lot of weight due to side effects of medicine, it affects your weight … Thanxxxx for your concern.”
Franklin has shut down past questions about her health but fans have noticed that the icon has been up and down for most of 2017. While performing at an event for Clive Davis in April, Franklin told the crowd she was under the weather.
“I’ve been fighting an upper respiratory viral infection,” she said. “So you’ll forgive me if I miss a few notes.”
And she’s canceled concerts in the past due to health issues, including canceling a date in Toronto this past June.
After undergoing a procedure in 2011 due to severe pain in her side, she addressed rumors that she had cancer. “I don’t know where ‘pancreatic cancer’ came from,” she told Access Hollywood at the time. “I was sitting there reading the newspaper and it was saying someone in my family said that. No one in my family ever said that to anybody.”
Franklin recently announced she would retire from performing later this year.
“I must tell you, I am retiring this year,” she said in an interview with Detroit TV station WDIV Local 4 in February. “I feel very, very enriched and satisfied with respect to where my career came from and where it is now. I’ll be pretty much satisfied, but I’m not going to go anywhere and just sit down and do nothing. That wouldn’t be good either.”
She plans to stay active by opening a nightclub.
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