Motown RecordsMotown M 1064 (B), February 1965

B-side of Stop! In The Name Of Honey

(Written past Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward The netherlands Jr.)

BritainTamla Motown TMG 501 (B), March 1965

B-side of Finish! In The Name Of Love

(Released in the UK under license through EMI / Tamla Motown)

Label scan kindly provided by Lars When talking about the mid-Sixties Supremes and their run of astonishing hit singles, it's easy to forget they were also a smashing albums human activity.

This seems to have gone largely unnoticed at the time – dorsum in 1965, the album itself was relatively new, only really starting time to emerge as an artistic argument, rather than a different format of single which happened to feature eleven B-sides instead of one. Also, of course, the fact that the Supremes were (a) black and (b) women didn't exactly take critics falling over themselves to praise, or fifty-fifty seriously consider, their latest LP; non until Touch in 1971 would Rolling Stone deign to give America'due south biggest-selling pop grouping a practiced album review.

And yet listening back today, their "proper" mid-Sixties studio LPs (Where Did Our Love Go, More Hits By The Supremes, I Hear A Symphony, Supremes A' Go-Get, The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland), all make for excellent listening. The innate popcraft of the Supremes and writer-producers Kingdom of the netherlands-Dozier-Holland resulted in five long-playing platters packed with tricky, claw-filled, iii-minute moments, the kind of "all killer, no filler" approach to albums only matched at the time by the far more critically-acclaimed likes of the Beatles or Embankment Boys – white boys with guitars who wrote their own songs, who in the tardily Sixties began to experiment with the concept of the LP as chiliad artistic statement, all the easier for the critics who'd originally turned up their noses to admit defeat – and which wouldn't actually be seen again until the rise of Abba in the mid-Seventies.

This approach – which rewards occasional "selection and mix" sampling of individual delights, rather than terminate-to-end plays on heavy rotation (like a dessert rather than a master course, as I've often said) – is a gift that keeps giving for the discerning pop fan. It bears dividends not just for the iPod generation, just also for readers of Motown Junkies – the grouping were so successful that Motown began to mine those albums relentlessly for material, oft slating various album cuts for B-sides and even A-sides (with scant regard to whether the songs in question were new or old) in social club to get as much highly-profitable Supremes product into the stores. The Brits got in on the human action, besides, Tamla Motown skimming already-released albums for potential 45s; the issue is that, over the next iii years, nosotros'll exist meeting nigh as many Supremes LP tracks hither on Motown Junkies equally we'll exist forced to skip.

The Supremes' mega-selling fourth LP, 'More Hits by the Supremes', the 'proper' follow-up to 'Where Did Our Love Go' following two albums best described as novelty side projects.Case in betoken: I'g In Love Again, the foreign, symphonic semi-ballad which would terminate up closing out More Hits by the Supremes, is i of an astonishing 17 – that's seventeen – Supremes tracks we'll cover during 1965, with another twenty to go before we attain the beginning of 1968 and the finish of Motown's Gilded Age. Information technology'south not an obvious choice for employ on a unmarried, given that the Supremes had had three straight Number Ane hits, and that the peerless pop of the A-side was about to brand information technology four in a row, meaning there was footling call for the traditional ballad flip to "prove a different side" of a group who'd just sold something like three one thousand thousand records in six months… but it's remarkable nevertheless, and I'g glad we get to hear it.

It's a very unusual record, this. It bears strong resemblance to the kind of textile the grouping had specialised in earlier in their musical lives, when they were the awkward, slightly shambling "no-hit Supremes" derided throughout Hitsville. In fact, what this sounds like is an out-accept from the girls' patchy only fascinating curate's egg of a début LP, Come across The Supremes, remade three years afterwards when those same girls were on elevation of the earth in both skill and confidence.

The melody is haunting, and I mean that literally – it'due south the sort of thing that doesn't simply become stuck in your head, simply rather creeps up on you in unexpected means, a actually pretty tune total of bold, startling choices, backed up by some absolutely lovely harmonies. Some of the chord changes are enough to brand the hairs on your cervix stand up, reminiscent of the strange, eerie moonlight and shadows of the Temptations' space historic period doo-wop days; meanwhile, the rhythm bed is surprisingly boisterous, similar the Funk Brothers running through an early on proof-of-concept test for What Becomes Of The Crestfallen the following year.

The US picture sleeve. Scan kindly provided by Lars The lyrics are remarkable, the opposite of most of the Supremes' all-time tracks to date: whereas they'd always detect their greatest success marrying downbeat sentiments with upbeat tunes, this ane is a celebration wrapped in a lament, the narrator scarcely able to believe her expert fortune as a lifetime of loneliness and misery is suddenly brushed bated.

Plus, in that location'due south a splendid lead vocal from Diana Ross to cap it all off; the lyrics are full of flashbacks to earlier, sadder times, Diana'southward narrator describing what a wreck she used to be in order to highlight how happy she is now. In less-skilled hands, this could fall very flat, but as always, Miss Ross can be relied upon to deliver the emotional connexion the song needs, able to plow on a sixpence betwixt sentiments like:

Once in heartbreak, I believed
Always in heartache
Lost in sorrow
With little promise for tomorrow

…and and then, scarcely a few seconds afterward:

When you lot smiled at me
My middle stood still
All the emptiness I had inside
You lot lovingly fulfilled
I and then felt born again
And it feels and then one thousand!

If the fundamental claw isn't quite there, meaning the chorus is left grasping for greatness, bumping into the bar rather than sailing over it as on the A-side, this still remains a surprising and surprisingly subtle record; forget all the novelty Broadway, British Invasion or country & western albums Motown forced them to tape, this right here is the true showcase for the Supremes' versatility, and they nail information technology. The group'south best B-side since Never Once more all those years agone, this is splendid, and it'southward no surprise Motown made sure it plant a place in history closing out a excellent album.

MOTOWN JUNKIES VERDICT

8/10

(I've had MY say, now it's your plough. Agree? Disagree? Go out a annotate, or click the thumbs at the lesser in that location. Dissent is encouraged!)

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