How ‘Respect’ became a battle cry for musicians seeking royalties
It was Aretha Franklin’s first No 1 hit, the cry of empowerment that has defined her for generations: “Respect.”
But for the roughly seven million times the song has been played on American radio stations, she was paid nothing.
When Franklin died on Thursday at age 76, fans celebrated the song all over again as a theme for the women’s rights movement. But in the music industry, “Respect” has also played a symbolic role in a long fight over copyright issues that, advocates say, have deprived artists like Franklin of fair royalty payments.
Under an aspect of copyright law that has long irked the record business, American radio stations pay only the writers and publishers of a song, not the artists who perform them. “Respect” was written by Otis Redding, who sang it as a man’s demand for recognition from his wife. Franklin turned the song upside down — or right-side up — and took it to heights Redding never dreamed of.
But every time the song is played on the radio, Redding’s estate — he died in a 1967 plane crash — has been paid. Franklin never was.
Efforts to change the law go back decades, with “Respect” often held up by the music industry as Exhibit A for why it was unfair. But broadcasters, a powerful lobbying group, have successfully argued that performers already benefit from the promotion they receive from radio play.
“Some recordings more clearly highlight the inequity of the laws, and ‘Respect’ is one of the best examples,” said Mitch Glazier, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, a trade group representing the major labels.
In recent years, “Respect” has also become a battle song in a fight over digital rights. Laws passed in the 1990s let performing artists collect royalties from internet and satellite radio, but songs were exempt if they were recorded before a change in federal copyright law took effect in 1972.
A 2014 bill to change that was named the Respect Act in honour of the song, which Franklin recorded in 1967. A lobbying campaign was titled “It’s a Matter of R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” with Franklin’s approval. And a current bill in Congress, the Music Modernization Act, would force digital radio services to pay royalties for songs recorded before 1972.
But as the bill has encountered opposition in the Senate, Franklin has again become a face for musicians’ anger.
After Sirius XM announced a tribute to Franklin on Thursday, David Lowery of the band Cracker, an outspoken artists’ rights advocate, protested on Twitter.
“Best way to pay RESPECT?” he wrote. “Pay her!”
The satellite service Sirius XM agreed in a settlement three years ago to pay record labels more than $200 million for its use of songs created before 1972, and to enter into new licensing deals, which would benefit performers like Franklin. But it has opposed the bill because it exempts terrestrial radio from the payments.
“Respect” entered Franklin’s repertoire at a pivotal moment in her career, as she was leaving Columbia Records for Atlantic, where she became a national star. Redding’s “Respect” had reached No 4 on the R&B chart in late 1965.
“I liked his version,” Franklin told The Washington Post in 1987. “Of course, I felt I could bring something new to it.”
According to David Ritz’s biography Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin, the song was already part of her live show by 1966. In the book, the producer Jerry Wexler recounts a conversation with Ted White, Franklin’s husband and manager at the time. Wexler was looking for songs for Franklin, and was fine with “Respect” as long as she “changes it up from the original.”
“You don’t gotta worry about that, Wex,” White replied, according to the book. “She changes it up all right.”
Franklin made small but crucial adjustments to the lyrics. Where Redding sang, “Do me wrong, honey, if you wanna / You can do me wrong, honey, while I’m gone,” for example, Ms. Franklin sang: “I ain’t gonna do you wrong while you’re gone / Ain’t gonna do you wrong ‘cause I don’t wanna.”
She also added what became the song’s signature line: “R-E-S-P-E-CT / Find out what it means to me.”
Franklin’s reinvention of Redding’s song has continued to fascinate critics. Peter Guralnick, the author of books like “Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom,” noted that she transformed the original meaning “not so much by changing the lyrics, as by the feeling that she imparted on the song — so that ‘Respect’ became a proclamation of freedom, a proclamation of feminism, a proclamation of an independent spirit.”