Respect

Aretha Franklin cut "Respect" in New York on Valentine's Day, 1967, but the song had started life as Otis Redding's. His 1965 version was a man's demand to be treated well when he came home from work, a crossover hit that reached the top five on Billboard's Black singles chart. Franklin had already been singing it in her live shows for several years, and she arrived at the session with her own arrangement. She flipped the point of view, working out the changes with her sisters Erma and Carolyn, and the new details came from the family. According to engineer Tom Dowd, spelling out the title letter by letter was Carolyn's idea, and the sisters' backing line about being socked to became a household expression. Franklin showed the Muscle Shoals rhythm section her stop-and-stutter groove, played piano herself, and King Curtis took a tenor saxophone solo over chords borrowed from a Sam & Dave song. Co-producer Arif Mardin later said there was never a day like it in the studio. The single spent two weeks at the top of the Billboard pop chart and won her two Grammy Awards. Redding joked at the Monterey Pop Festival that a girl had taken the song away from him. Franklin's demand for respect was heard as part of the Black freedom struggle and of women's liberation, and in the 1970s it became a feminist anthem. She herself said it was not bold at all, simply natural that everyone wants respect. In 2021 Rolling Stone named it the greatest song of all time.