Before and After Aretha

To be a popular artist is, generally, to bend yourself into whatever form the public demands of you. As audiences, we have tortured such gorgeous majesties out of our artists, coaxing them into unrecognizable shapes to satisfy our ever-shifting appetites and prejudices. Those contortions are more elaborate for people of color, practically byzantine for women, and downright murderous for black women.

Aretha Franklin was unrivaled in her ability to bend that reality rather than bend to it. Most artists thrive for a season, then fade into legend; very few artists have influenced as broad a span of culture as she did. And none other brought as much of the many-hued experience of our society to the fore while surrendering as little to the dictates of that society.