'Respect' is the greatest song on perhaps the greatest soul album of all time. Released on March 10, 1967, 'I Never Loved a Man' marked Aretha Franklin's musical declaration of independence and her coronation as the Queen of Soul.

In addition to the title track and 'Respect,' the album included soon-to-be classics like 'Dr. Feelgood,' 'Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,' and 'Change is Gonna Come.' It commenced one of the most remarkable stretches of commercial and critical success in music history (Franklin won Grammy Awards every year between 1969 and 1975).

For Franklin's career and for American culture more generally, 'Respect' was a harbinger of things to come. Taking a song Otis Redding had made a modest hit two years earlier, Franklin changes it radically -- by hardly changing it at all. When Redding performed 'Respect,' it was a soulful but conventional song in a long tradition of music about hard-working men who want what's coming to them from their women when they come home. When Aretha sings it, it becomes a bold proclamation of equal love rights years before the feminist movement reached full strength. This is music on her terms, and 'Respect' names those terms explicitly: to give and receive love (in all senses of the word), to be acknowledged as a social equal, and to be treated with respect as she defines it.

In Franklin's performance one can hear the pattern for Mary J. Blige's streetwise sensitivity, Lauryn Hill's sophistication, Whitney Houston's (late '80s Whitney, at least) flirtatious femininity, even Beyoncé's flair for the dramatic. Respect due.

About the Author

Adam Bradley is a freelance writer living in New England.