Pop & Hiss

Fans of legendary singer Aretha Franklin in Hollywood and beyond said little prayers of gratitude for the “Respect”-demanding singer, who died at age 76 on Thursday of advanced pancreatic cancer.

Music icons across genres — Diana Ross, Paul McCartney, Annie Lennox and Faith Hill — tweeted about her impact on their community and the void her death leaves behind.

Parsing out Aretha Franklin’s influence on contemporary culture is a foolish task. Without her, nothing comes after.

Some musicians are content to entertain an audience, others seek to illuminate issues or themes close to their hearts, and some are in it chiefly for fame and/or fortune. A precious few see music as a way to channel and disseminate nothing less than a life force through music, a mission that appears to be the raison d’être of Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats.

As prolific as she was influential, Aretha Franklin released dozens of albums in a career that lasted longer than half a century.

Here are five of her most important:

“Laughing on the Outside,” 1963

With a seemingly arbitrary mix of pop, jazz and R&B tunes, Franklin’s early-’60s output on Columbia Records left audiences unsure about what kind of singer they were hearing.

In early 1972, Aretha Franklin arrived at the New Temple Missionary Baptist Church in Watts for a pair of performances with the backing of the Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir. Recorded by Atlantic Records engineers and documented on film by Sydney Pollack, the music was released less than six months later as the double album “Amazing Grace.”

The Grammy Awards ceremony has never suffered a shortage of drama during the annual telecast.

But there probably was never a more heart-stopping turn of events than on the night of Feb. 25, 1998, when the 40th Grammys were put on at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.