A MOTOWN COMPILATION: 25 NUMBER ONE HITS FROM 25 YEARS

Rip It Up, Issue 80, 1 March 1984, Page 16

A MOTOWN COMPILATION: 25 NUMBER ONE HITS FROM 25 YEARS

ALASTAIR DOUGAL

Twenty Five Number One Hits from 25 Years ; the title says it all. And although there’s not a Number One from every one of those 25 years, it’s pretty damn close. So in this document of Motown’s first quarter century you go from the clanging of the Marvelettes’ Tlease Mr Postman’ to the syrup of Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross’ ‘Endless Love’. Inbet ween you chart the rise of the

greatest popular music production line of all time, its decline and, in its place, the rise of the artist/producers, as Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, Rick James, Lionel Ritchie and others take control of their careers and steer them into the Top 10. The track selection here is not unarguable. I mean, does anybody need both ‘Three Times A Ladv’ and ‘Still’ from the Commodores? In tneir place I’d take other Number Ones, say Edwin Starr’s ‘War’ or Mary Wells’ ‘My Guy’ or the Temptations’ ‘Can’t Get Next to You’.

But then this record is not a best of Tamla Motown. That record will be

selected for artistic excellence and not for copies sold. For all that it is remarkable how often Motown’s creative highspots are-often its biggest hits. Testimony to how well Berry Gordy and his company monitored the taste of its audience. It may be, as one critic pointed out, that Motown has been interested in nothing so much as success, but for a remarkable decade it achieved that success without pandering to its audience.. Indeed, in its heyday it defined the terms of. its own success. In 1971 Jon Landau could write “there is still a Motown look to the album covers, a

Motown touch to the song writing, a Motown style of singing and, above all, a Motown sound. Anyone with ears can still tell a Motown record 10 seconds after it comes on the air.”

But nobody could say that today. Does ‘Endless Love’ have the Motown sound, or ‘Three Times A Lady’, or Rick James’ ‘Give It To Me’?

These days Motown mostly follows and rarely (with the exception of perhaps only Stevie Wonder) leads. OK, let’s look at the 25 Number One hits.