Aretha Franklin
When Otis Redding wrote "Respect," the singer was the one demanding it from his partner when he came home. Aretha Franklin changed one word: "when I come home" became "when you come home." That single pronoun flipped the entire power dynamic of the song. When producer Jerry Wexler played Franklin's version for Redding, he smiled and said: "The girl has taken that song from me. From now on, it belongs to her." In the Muscle Shoals studio, engineer Tom Dowd fell off his chair the first time he heard the spelling section. Released April 29, 1967, the single was number 1 within five weeks.
In our deep dive into Respect, we trace the song from Redding's original to the moment Dowd fell off his chair, and what it reveals about how completely one artist can transform another's work with a single changed word.
