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‘Find out what it means to me’: Aretha Franklin's gendered re-authoring of Otis Redding's ‘Respect’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2014

Victoria Malawey
Victoria Malawey*
Affiliation:
Music Department, Macalester College, 1600 Grand Avenue, Saint Paul, MN 55105, USA E-mail: vmalawey@macalester.edu
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Abstract

In her re-authoring of Otis Redding's ‘Respect’, Aretha Franklin's seminal 1967 recording features striking changes to melodic content, vocal delivery, lyrics and form. Musical analysis and transcription reveal Franklin's re-authoring techniques, which relate to rhetorical strategies of motivated rewriting, talking texts and call-and-response introduced by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. The extent of her re-authoring grants her status as owner of the song and results in a new sonic experience that can be clearly related to the cultural work the song has performed over the past 45 years. Multiple social movements claimed Franklin's ‘Respect’ as their anthem, and her version more generally functioned as a song of empowerment for those who have been marginalised, resulting in the song's complex relationship with feminism. Franklin's ‘Respect’ speaks dialogically with Redding's version as an answer song that gives agency to a female perspective speaking within the language of soul music, which appealed to many audiences.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , May 2014 , pp. 185 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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