It’s hard to argue that it doesn’t sound nice, but given the pedigree of everyone involved – given this is Motown we’re talking about here, and in the summer of 1965 to boot – well, I’m just looking for more than pleasant and meaningless wallpaper. (4)
It’s the sort of thing where you could imagine Mary Wells having an absolute field day, but Brenda treats it as nothing more than a vocal showcase and, I have to say, I don’t really like it all that much. (4)
Sumptuous in its beauty, quietly devastating in its lyrics… I don’t know how he’s doing this. (8)
For the second time in a row, the Miracles are shafted out of a (10) simply because I’ve only got fifty to award, and I’d run out of them. But, again, if you were to say this one was your favourite Miracles single, favourite Motown single, even… I’d get it. (9)
Unexpectedly, it turns out Smokey, and Motown, needed the Contours to exist: not as a link to the past, but as an outlet for silly ideas, as an expression of physical energy, as a pressure valve. And this, daft as it is, is just buckets of fun. (7)
The overall effect is to remind me of the Supremes’ similarly beautiful, similarly half-realised Standing At The Crossroads Of Love: when it’s lovely, it’s lovely enough to matter. (6)
Absolutely fine as far as pleasingly diverting B-sides go. It’s just the widespread admiration that baffles me. Would I jump up to turn it off? Of course not. Would I pick it out as some sort of highlight? Not in a million years. (5)
The Temptations cover themselves in glory here. This is the sound of a group absolutely on top of their game; the true follow-up to My Girl, and – unexpectedly – very nearly as good. (9)
I still wouldn’t go so far as to say I really liked it, but this is another definite improvement on the original, and if these Mary Wells covers were proving to be chart poison for Brenda, well, on this evidence she was at least getting rather better at doing them. (5)
If nobody will be confusing this for a masterpiece any time soon, nonetheless I much prefer this version to the original; finally the song makes sense. Not as a choice of single, mind you. (6)
Pretty much the very definition of Temptations album filler, a pleasant but largely pointless retouching of a song that didn’t have anything wrong with it in the first place. (5)
Too much of a glorious mess to have been a huge hit on original release, but it’s both insanely ambitious and impressively executed, and it adds up to yet another excellent side in this magnificent run. (8)
A listener at the end of 1964 might well have wondered, with good reason, whether the Miracles really had a place in Motown’s brave new world of corporate greed and thundering cash registers. This pair of sides not only put such doubts to rest, but showed the Miracles to be at the vanguard of the company’s very best acts. Quite exceptional stuff. (8)
At a Q&A event in a high school classroom later in the year, Berry Gordy was asked by one of the students: “How do you find guys like Smokey Robinson?” His reply was curt: “You don’t find guys like Smokey Robinson.” (9)
I love Marvin Gaye. Love him. As you’ll see later, he’s probably my favourite Motown artist. But this – this beautifully-formed little pop record – is wrong, and I’d be lying to myself – and undoing the entire purpose of this blog – if I didn’t call him and Smokey out for it. (5)
I can appreciate how skilfully it’s been made, but I get no emotional connection from it, it doesn’t move me, and ultimately that’s what I want from a pop record, no matter how astonishing the lead vocals are. (5)
Plenty of respected judges, including commenters on this very site, have said they prefer Brenda’s version to Mary’s; I can’t help but wonder how I’d feel if I’d heard the two versions the “right” way round too, because – for me – this one just isn’t a patch on that one. (6)
If My Girl isn’t in your fifty top Motown tunes, I fear nothing can be done for you. (10)
After the bland rock-out blind alley of the A-side, it’s just good to hear the Miracles back on something like their usual form. (7)
A waste of the talents of everyone involved, wafer-thin and surprisingly ill-suited to its lead singer; even Smokey isn’t taking this seriously, so there’s really no reason we should bother. (3)
Completely out of character for the group – if you were asked to identify these guys on sound alone, “the Contours” would be the absolute last answer you’d give – but no worse for it. Nice surprises are the best kind of surprises, after all. (7)
It’s hardly Carolyn’s fault that Robinson opted to give the song another go after two more years of polishing, with two more years of experience, and that the singer he chose went on to become one of the label’s most beloved and skilful interpreters. It’s just bad luck, I suppose. (4)
It’s still a good song, and it still makes for a good record – but the existence of a better previous version means this is reduced to being a bit of a pointless do-over. (5)
Fine work, and as second chances go, at least this time Mickey couldn’t complain that he wasn’t given a great song. (7)
One of Motown’s biggest personalities and one of Motown’s biggest voices, and they’re utterly wasted on this thin little sketch, a failed proof of concept intended for two entirely different people; it’s like giving Cézanne a paint by numbers and some chunky crayons. (3)
There isn’t any more after this, I’m afraid, and so it’s up to us to squeeze as much entertainment as possible from these last dregs. Which, it turns out, is actually quite a bit of entertainment, all things considered. (4)
Too slow and gentle, and (more importantly) too meandering, for commercial success, and lacking the killer hook to take it to the very top level – but it’s beautiful and it’s honest, and if a record has those things going for it, you can’t really say too much against it. (7)
This is a water-treading, wheel-spinning entry in the Miracles catalogue, pleasant enough but lacking everything that made me love I Like It Like That, and if anyone were to tell me this was their favourite Miracles record, I’d be deeply suspicious. (5)
The whole thing is just a chore to listen to, a massive comedown after the rush of the A-side. (2)
It’s memorable and striking, but also jarringly misaligned; if it’s less of a mess, in its own way, than the half-hearted A-side, it’s still not as good as it should be, sounding unfinished and underproduced, even shambolic in places. (4)
Really not very good at all, a stark example of what happens when you try to squeeze a big-voiced R&B star vocalist into a pop framework cut to someone else’s measurements – but that’s not to overlook the fact the song itself isn’t very good either. (2)
Enough to suggest Carolyn could have been a major talent. Even if that’s a stretch, it’s certainly plausible she might have become another Brenda Holloway, Barbara McNair – or Tammi Terrell. In the absence of that alternate-universe career, this will have to do, and it’s not half bad. (7)
For want of a better word, it’s sophisticated, in pretty much every sense. Mary, having come of age, delivers the first great single of her new career as one of America’s top stars – and nobody got to hear it for two years. (8)
Probably the Marvelettes’ best single in two years, even if I’m not sure quite how it managed to be so (and I’m not convinced they did either). Still, it’s hard to argue with results like these. (8)
Plenty of fun as far as it goes, but that only really lasts for as long as it’s playing – you wouldn’t dig it out on purpose for repeated listening, and it fades from the memory literally ten seconds after it’s done. (4)
Not even the most die-hard Miracles fan would say this was the big-ticket hit single to return them to the top, but it’s a lovely, warm-hearted record, impossible to dislike. A minor work in the Miracles canon, for sure, but a really enjoyable one all the same. (8)
Despite some rough edges, there’s plenty to like and enjoy here – it just doesn’t feel like the next step for this group, or indeed like any kind of step from The Way You Do The Things You Do at all. (6)
Perfect.
Motown’s musical standards had risen dramatically in the 18 months or so since this was first cut, and by those increasingly rarefied and demanding standards, this rough-edged R&B scribble just wasn’t up to scratch any more. (4)
Not bad, per se, but absolutely nothing special. (4)
Beautiful and intriguing, and those are the last words I’d expected to be using to describe a long-forgotten Bobby Breen B-side. (7)
