Songfacts®:

• Aretha Franklin wrote this uptempo R&B classic with her then-husband and manager Ted White. In the song, the Queen of Soul is dealing with the aftermath of a fight that resulted in her lover walking out the door. In reality, she wasn't pleading for her husband to come back. After years of abuse, Franklin separated from White around the time Lady Soul was released, and the pair divorced the following year.
• Like her other Altantic hits, this features the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, who were flown in from Alabama to record at the label's studio in New York City.
• Franklin's sisters Erma and Carolyn provided backing vocals, along with the Sweet Inspirations. Carolyn, who also wrote the single's hit B-side "Ain't No Way," told David Ritz for the biography Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin: "Aretha liked to call me the writer of the family, but just as she had the big talent as a singer, she had that same big talent as a composer. The difference is that she pursued the singing with all she had but slacked off on the writing."
• This was Franklin's fifth #1 single on the R&B chart. In just one week, it sold over 450,000 copies.
• Gary Puckett & The Union Gap covered this on their 1968 album, Young Girl.
• This was used in the sitcom Murphy Brown in the 1989 episode "And So He Goes." It was also featured in the 1999 movie Bicentennial Man, starring Robin Williams.