She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years... She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the s*** out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best f***in’ singer this f***ed-up country has ever produced. | | | | Aretha checks out Aretha, New York, Jan. 9, 1969.
(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | | | “She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years... She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the s*** out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best f***in’ singer this f***ed-up country has ever produced.”
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| | rantnrave:// ARETHA FRANKLIN wrote or co-wrote her fair share of songs, some of them stone cold classics. But she made her mark on a half-century of music largely by singing music and lyrics written by or for others. Covers, you might say, not inaccurately. But that word doesn't do justice to what Aretha Franklin did. Her voice was her pen. She used it transform and reclaim nearly every song she touched, discovering spiritual fire, sexual power and sociopolitical meanings unknown to anyone who may have touched a song before her. Her voice was one of the all-time great pop/soul/R&B/gospel songwriters. She also sometimes did it the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper, as in the "R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Find out what it means to me" hook that she added to OTIS REDDING's "RESPECT" ("I just lost my song," Redding said when he heard her version. "That girl stole my song"). But as interpreter/transformer, she turned BEATLES songs inside-out, gospel songs upside-down and patriotic songs into revolutionary ideas of what America is or could be. MusicSET: "S-O-N-G-S of Aretha Franklin"... Like all working people in all professions, Aretha liked to be paid for her work. When she sang live, she demanded her pay upfront, in cash. But she didn't have that kind of leverage with radio. In 51 years of terrestrial radio play for her signature hit, "Respect," she has earned zero dollars and zero cents. (You may want to pause here and read that last sentence again. I'll understand.) "Respect" isn't a big earner for her on digital radio either, thanks to copyright law that continues to exempt songs recorded before 1972 from those royalties in the U.S. There will be some posthumous online checks though. She had major hits for labels now owned by both SONY, which has begun distributing $750 million in SPOTIFY stock profits to artists— free and clear of any unrecouped earnings—and WARNER, which has $126 million to distribute but is withholding unrecouped balances. Another chance, perhaps, for "Respect," which falls under the Warner umbrella, to lose out one more time... MTV will pay tribute to Aretha during tonight's VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS (9pm ET on MTV). "She’s one of the all-time greats so we have to do her justice," says the show's exec producer, JESSE IGNJATOVIC. JENNIFER LOPEZ will collect the VIDEO VANGUARD AWARD... RIP JILL JANUS and DANNY PEARSON. | | | - Matty Karas, curator |
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| "I celebrate having been a witness to her life, and mourn her passing because she was special, and we may not see her equal again." | | |
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| The song “Respect” helped Aretha Franklin soar to fame and became an anthem for the women’s rights movement. But radio royalties for the song went to its writer, Otis Redding. | | |
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| Cherie Hu breaks down the increasing similarities between “music companies” and “media companies.” | | |
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| Warped Tour was flawed, but no more flawed than the many homes I chose for myself outside of it. | | |
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| Sony Music has begun to distribute the $750 million in profit it collected from the April sale of 50% of its Spotify shares to the artists and distributed labels within the Sony system, Variety has confirmed. As previously reported, Sony will not count the funds against the artists' and label's unrecouped earnings. | | |
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| Making sure you’re digitally credited for the music you make is key to your income--and your success. | | |
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| Heavy is the head that wears the crown, argues Shanita Hubbard in this op-ed. | | |
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| The Arnau family started with a single social club in 1870. Now, the Spanish dynasty turns over £18m a year with its hypercolour techno carnivals - by prizing spectacle over DJs. | | |
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| Why, exactly, is it so hard to determine the “Meant to Be” singer’s deal? | | |
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| Recently Deutsche Grammophon, home of Herbert von Karajan and other renown New shamans of sound, announced the launch of DG Playlists in conjunction with Apple Music. Many will have sympathy with the reader's comment on Slipped Disc of "and so the slow death of a label without artistic vision continues". | | |
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| Zane Lowe in 2015 was hired by the tech giant to bring some brand name recognition -- and a gregarious personality -- to the world of streaming music, a bold shift at the time away from logarithm-based programming. | | |
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| Biographer David Ritz tells the story of the five years he spent with Aretha, getting to know the famously guarded Queen of Soul and trying to understand the pain behind her genius. | | |
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| In Aretha Franklin's gospel work, black life is sacred and to feel is to invent. | | |
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| China tech IPOs, of companies such as Xiaomi and Pinduoduo, have struggled this year. That puts the spotlight on the next big U.S. public offering from China, which is likely to be Tencent Music Entertainment Group, China’s answer to Spotify. | | |
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| As his film ‘Juliet, Naked’ hits theaters, Jesse Peretz reflects on how he, an ex-Lemonheads bassist, became TV’s most in-demand—‘Girls,’ ‘Glow,’ ‘OITNB’—director of women. | | |
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| Rich people march to a different tune. The richest Americans may be way more likely to listen to classical music - which could include Beethoven, Mozart and Bach - than the rest of us. | | |
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| The "Just Dance" singer's meteoric rise to celebrity status not only defined the trajectory of Lady Gaga's career, but reimagined the way that up-and-coming pop musicians establish themselves as industry mainstays. | | |
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| Composer Anna Meredith's bold electronic creations sound how thirteen feels. Gucci! | | |
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| Kodak Black was sent to jail in January. Seven months later, he’s finally out, and his friends and lawyer say he’s on the straight-and-narrow. | | |
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| How programmers are finding countless ways to reexamine the Fab Four’s legacy. | | |
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