When I am frustrated with my generation it is often because we have a willful disregard for what has come before. Aretha seems a prime example of this. Those hats are the hats of black churches. That weight and those breasts are a body that has aged. That hometown is family and that fear of flying is, above all, human. That “shut up” was a demand that you recognize she has been there, she has done that, and you could learn a thing or two from listening to where the “there” and the “that” have brought her and what they have shown her.

By Nell Boeschenstein, The Morning News