Some singer-songwriters are celebrated for both skills, and others seem only to be known as singers. I can’t decide whether in the case of Aretha Franklin this is due to plain old discrimination, or whether it’s because her voice is so sensational that there isn’t time to appreciate her as a songwriter. But she is both (she wrote Think, which is also her actual best song), and an arranger to boot.

I have a burgeoning theory as to why women singer-songwriters in general, and women singer-songwriters of colour in particular, have written so few Christmas songs, but it’s not fully-formed yet so I’ll save it for another day. When you sing like this, though, you can sing anyone’s songs, even when they’re eighteenth-century hymns.