Soul found its apotheosis in Aretha Franklin. Ever since she was crowned “The Queen of Soul” in 1967 by DJ Pervis Spann in a mock ceremony at the Regal Theater in Chicago, no one has come close to contesting the title. Ms. Franklin — who died T hursday at 76 — sang in a voice that struck an ideal balance of strength and sensitivity, of roiling emotion and refined skill. Even when she hit a note with terrific force, her tone never lost its beauty. And each note brought with it a huge context. “American history wells up when Aretha sings,” President Obama wrote in an email to The New Yorker’s David Remnick for a 2016 profile of the star. “Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R&B, rock ’n’ roll — the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope.”

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Ms. Franklin had the ability to make songs previously identified with other singers her own, and to write original pieces others pined to cover. While she made hundreds of indelible songs in her six-decade-long recording career, these 20 rank among her most defining.