ARETHA FRANKLIN wrote or co-wrote her fair share of songs, some of them stone cold classics. But she made her mark on a half-century of music largely by singing music and lyrics written by or for others. Covers, you might say, not inaccurately. But that word doesn't do justice to what Aretha Franklin did. Her voice was her pen. She used it transform and reclaim nearly every song she touched, discovering spiritual fire, sexual power and sociopolitical meanings unknown to anyone who may have touched a song before her. Her voice was one of the all-time great pop/soul/R&B/gospel songwriters. She also sometimes did it the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper, as in the "R-E-S-P-E-C-T / Find out what it means to me" hook that she added to OTIS REDDING's "RESPECT" ("I just lost my song," Redding said when he heard her version. "That girl stole my song"). But as interpreter/transformer, she turned BEATLES songs inside-out, gospel songs upside-down and patriotic songs into revolutionary ideas of what America is or could be. MusicSET: "S-O-N-G-S of Aretha Franklin"... Like all working people in all professions, Aretha liked to be paid for her work. When she sang live, she demanded her pay upfront, in cash. But she didn't have that kind of leverage with radio. In 51 years of terrestrial radio play for her signature hit, "Respect," she has earned zero dollars and zero cents. (You may want to pause here and read that last sentence again. I'll understand.) "Respect" isn't a big earner for her on digital radio either, thanks to copyright law that continues to exempt songs recorded before 1972 from those royalties in the U.S. There will be some posthumous online checks though. She had major hits for labels now owned by both SONY, which has begun distributing $750 million in SPOTIFY stock profits to artists— free and clear of any unrecouped earnings—and WARNER, which has $126 million to distribute but is withholding unrecouped balances. Another chance, perhaps, for "Respect," which falls under the Warner umbrella, to lose out one more time... MTV will pay tribute to Aretha during tonight's VIDEO MUSIC AWARDS (9pm ET on MTV). "She’s one of the all-time greats so we have to do her justice," says the show's exec producer, JESSE IGNJATOVIC. JENNIFER LOPEZ will collect the VIDEO VANGUARD AWARD... RIP JILL JANUS and DANNY PEARSON.