by Lori Lakin Hutcherson, GBN Founder and Editor-in-Chief
It’s commonly known if Aretha Franklin covered a song you wrote and/or recorded, it would from her recording forward be known as her song.
Otis Redding, composer and original performer of “Respect”, said as much at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967: “a girl took [‘Respect’] away from me, a friend of mine, this girl she just took this song.”
Other examples of this usurpation include “I Say A Little Prayer” (composed by Burt Bacharach/Hal David and recorded by Dionne Warwick), “Until You Come Back To Me”(composed by Stevie Wonder) and “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (composed by Simon and Garfunkel).
If you want to hear her versions of these songs along with even more evidence of Aretha’s virtuoso mastery of covers, check the link to my playlist “How I Got Over”: Aretha Franklin’s Cover Songs right here.
But today, on what would have been her 83rd birthday, I’m drawn to the songs that Franklin herself composed or co-wrote — ones that shaped her sound and offered insights into her own mind and soul. A collection of those gems, “Rock Steady”: Songs Aretha Franklin Wrote is included below:
While her classic bangers “Think”, “Dr. Feelgood” and “Rock Steady” contain, comment and reflect upon the energy of the civil rights and women’s movements of the 1960s and 1970s — movements rooted in opposing and dismantling white supremacy and patriarchy — and are more relevant than ever in the current political climate, it’s “Spirit in the Dark” that’s hitting hardest for me today.
Granted, “Spirit in the Dark” is an all-time Aretha favorite of mine, because it is simultaneously the most and least gospel gospel song I’ve ever heard.
It’s mind-blowing, really. The slow, rocking gospel intro, the lift into the chorus, the transition into the hyped up “get the spirit” section – the compositional structure is masterfully classic – yet also feels completely secular and modern in how Franklin arranges it.
The lyrics are as uplifting as they are raunchy and Aretha’s delivery of the song is deliciously desirous and divine. This intentional blurring of what were traditionally thought of as separate lines/sounds/philosophies/lifestyles brings a wholeness, a completeness and a joyousness to both the sacred and profane.
Because really, at the end of the day, life is life, love is love, joy is joy and rapture is rapture. All avenues to it that don’t harm others are all good and it is my strong belief that Aretha knew this and was expressing precisely this in this original song of hers – and throughout her life.
“Spirit in the Dark” expresses for me what I’ve been feeling since the fully disappointing result of the 2024 Presidential Election – the desire to connect to real spirit or be a real spirit amid the collective darkness and doom. To live our truths no matter what systemic forces attempt to proscribe or prohibit for us.
Also, it gave me the glorious excuse to rewatch and share the 15 minute video above of the live 1971 performance of “Spirit In The Dark” at the Filmore West where Aretha plays the Wurlitzer, spirit dances across the stage (damn if she doesn’t do an early version of the moonwalk in here!) and spontaneously brings up Ray Charles to riff and workout on the track as well.
As I wrote several years ago in elegy to her 2018 passing, among so many other things, Aretha Franklin was a Black woman from Detroit by way of Memphis who forever looked like my grandmother, my mother, my auntie, my deacon – and lived in the kind of body brought to this nation solely to serve this nation, not to sway it.
Yet that’s exactly what she did, with the breadth of a brilliance that will be revered and remembered forever.
Willie Nelson
