Respect is due Otis Redding — and Aretha Franklin.
For the first time since 2004, Rolling Stone magazine has reshuffled its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time, and Franklin’s version of Redding’s masterpiece is now No. 1.
“Respect” replaces Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” which moves to fourth place. Coming in second and third are Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” and Sam Cooke’s “A Change is Gonna Come.” Nirvana rounds out the top five with “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”
One more group of Georgia natives makes the top of the list: Outkast’s “Hey Ya” is listed at No. 10.
See how other Georgia musicians and writers ranked
According to Rolling Stone magazine, more than 250 artists, writers and “industry figures” helped select and place the new list of 500 songs from a pool of 4,000.
Each judge ranked their top 50 songs and Rolling Stone crunched the numbers. Naysayers immediately began questioning the results, which is what these lists are for. Wrote one critic on the Rolling Stone website: “As a disgruntled Gen-Xer, this is yet another RS list that proves the Millennials have taken over the magazine (not necessarily a bad thing) and they have terrible taste in music (definitely a bad thing).”
“Respect” was at No. 5 in the 2004 list. This year the choosers may have been influenced by the extra attention paid to “Respect” due to the new bio-pic of the same name, starring Jennifer Hudson as Aretha Franklin. The movie was released in August.
Redding recorded “Respect” in 1965 as a single for his third album.
Franklin’s version of Respect, with its chanting horns and start-stop rhythms, reached the airwaves in April, 1967. It immediately eclipsed Redding’s recording, spending two weeks atop the Billboard Pop Singles Chart, and eight weeks on the Billboard Black Singles chart.
At the time Redding remarked with mock ruefulness “this girl, she just took this song.”
Redding would die later that year touring with the Bar-Kays when a private plane in which he was a passenger crashed into frigid Lake Monona, three miles short of the runway of an airport near Madison, Wisc.
Redding’s mournful “Dock of the Bay,” was released just a few days later by his collaborator Steve Cropper. The new list from Rolling Stone places that posthumous song at No. 38.
To see the full list of 500 songs go to rollingstone.com.
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