Arena

TOP SONGS

OF ALL TIME

Welcome to the Arena, our virtual concert hall at the heart of MLC’s Campus. Regularly updated, so remember to check back in, it’s designed for music enthusiasts. We invite you to immerse yourself in the performances and recordings of some of the most iconic songs, musicians and bands from history.

Witness legendary performances and explore a rich archive of musical mastery. Whether you’re studying the intricate techniques of your favourite artists or simply revelling in their artistry, the Arena is your gateway to an extraordinary musical journey.

Join us at the Arena. Learn from the legends, get inspired, and see where the music can take you.

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Aretha Franklin – Respect

When Aretha Franklin left Columbia Records for Atlantic in 1966, the label’s vice president, Jerry Wexler, came to the singer with some suggestions for songs she might cover, like Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” and Ray Charles’ “Drown in My Own Tears.” She liked those ideas, but she had one of her own: “Respect,” a song she’d been performing live. “Long as she changes it up,” Wexler told Franklin’s manager Ted White in an exchange recounted by Franklin’s biographer David Ritz. “You don’t gotta worry about that,” White responded. “She changes it up all right.”

Otis Redding wrote “Respect” and recorded it for the Stax/Volt label in 1965. But Franklin took possession of the song for all time with her definitive cover, cut at Atlantic’s New York studio on Valentine’s Day 1967. “Respect” was her first Number One hit and the single that established her as the Queen of Soul.

There is no mistaking the passion inside the discipline of Franklin’s delivery; she was surely drawing on her own tumultuous marriage at the time for inspiration. “If she didn’t live it,” Wexler said, “she couldn’t give it.” But, he added, “Aretha would never play the part of the scorned woman.… Her middle name was Respect.”

Leading off her Atlantic debut, I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You, “Respect” catalysed rock & roll, gospel, and blues to create the model for soul music that artists still look to today (Mariah Carey called Franklin “my mentor”). Just as important, the song’s unapologetic demands resonated powerfully with the civil rights movement and emergent feminist revolution, fitting for an artist who donated to the Black Panther Party and sang at the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. In her 1999 memoir, Franklin wrote that the song reflected “the need of the average man and woman in the street, the businessman, the mother, the fireman, the teacher — everyone wanted respect.” We still do.

— Courtesy of Rolling Stone

This Month’s Shows

Schedule

  • 17th Jan
    17th Jan

    Gallus – Fruitflies

  • 24th Jan
    24th Jan

    Nova Twins – Antagonist

  • 31st Jan
    31st Jan

    Thousand Thoughts – Fail Me