“Respect” by Aretha Franklin

Otis Redding wrote "Respect" and cut it himself in 1965, but in 1967 Aretha Franklin rearranged it, reworded it and took it for good, making it her breakout hit and the song she'd be known by forever. It sits on I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, produced by Jerry Wexler with Tom Dowd recording, and the band is pure muscle: Roger Hawkins on drums, Tommy Cogbill on bass, Jimmy Johnson on guitar, Spooner Oldham on piano, and a horn section with King Curtis and Charles Chalmers on tenor, Willie Bridges on baritone and Melvin Lastie on trumpet.

Her tweaks to the words gave it a new story about dignity, one widely heard as a statement on how men and women treat each other, and feminists of the 1970s took it up as an anthem. It won her two Grammys in 1968, and Rolling Stone's 2021 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time put it at number one.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.