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Gordy G 7046 (A), September 1965
b/w Don’t Compare Me With Her
(Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland Jr.)
Tamla Motown TMG 538 (A), October 1965
b/w Don’t Compare Me With Her
(Licensed for British release via EMI/Tamla Motown)
We’ve seen some good records from Kim Weston up until now here on Motown Junkies, records that marked her out as an obvious star in the making. And yet so far, while most of those records – records like A Little More Love, I’m Still Loving You, or What Good Am I Without You – have been very fine, they’ve never exactly sat easily with the rest of the Motown catalogue. In short, Kim hasn’t yet recorded anything that sounds like a Motown hit.
But this is her first truly great single; here, some two and a half years after signing her up, it seems Motown – at long last – have figured out what to do with Kim Weston. Paired for the first time with the crack Holland-Dozier-Holland team, Kim and the musicians finally get a song that works, a song where they can bring it all together. What do you know? It turns out she’s every inch the star she always threatened to be.
Theories abound – some of them outlandish – as to why it took Motown so long to pair Miss Weston with the HDH team: from a supposedly over-protective love interest (and soon-to-be husband) in A&R chief Mickey Stevenson, to the difficulties of finding the right métier for her uniquely powerful voice (ballads, torch songs, bouncy pop, even jazz or gospel?), to Motown’s craven desire for “crossover” acceptance with white audiences meaning they were less willing to push a particularly dark-skinned lady like Kim (no matter how stunningly beautiful she is), to the top brass simply not being excited enough about her prospects. I think most of those are bollocks, to a lesser or greater degree – the more prosaic explanation would surely just be that almost nobody at Hitsville (including top names like the Vandellas and Marvelettes) got regular mid-Sixties facetime with Holland-Dozier-Holland other than “their” pet projects, the Supremes and Four Tops – but the fact remains that for whatever reason, it took a long time to pair Kim with the company’s top hitmakers. Still, once she got that break, she grabbed it with both hands, and the results are both immediate and astonishing.
Kim is so good here. In many ways, this is unlike a “regular” Holland-Dozier-Holland production; it’s jazzy and muscular and loud, driven right from the start by an insistent snare drum and then a rollicking band track full of jangling guitar and rumbling organ. Does any of this faze Kim? Not even a little bit – she starts off in a deep, breathy, seductive contralto as the drums and tambourine echo off the walls, and then as soon as the guitar strikes up, she takes that as her clearance for take-off, ramping up the energy levels, and away she goes. There’s never any doubt as to who’s the boss here: not a second of Take Me In Your Arms goes by when Kim Weston isn’t absolutely in charge of this record.
Which is strange, when you think about it, because the lyric is very much not about Kim being in charge. The title sounds romantic, but the song is actually desperate, a plea for a second chance from a woman close to the edge. But this is no meek, weepy request, it’s more like a demand: yeah, I’ve messed up alright, I won’t deny it, but come on, man.
So often on this blog I’ve described a record as being electrifying, but this is maybe the one that actually comes closest to that description, positively buzzing with juice to the point you expect the lights to start flickering. Maybe it’s a sign of the times; Kim had won the internal “battle” to become Mary Wells’ replacement as Marvin Gaye’s duet partner (if not in other respects), already showing she was capable of mixing it with Marvin in the rough-housing boogie-woogie thump of What Good Am I Without You, quite able to knock him on his back if the song called for it.
Now, Holland-Dozier-Holland apply a logical extension; if Kim could handle Marvin in their duets, then surely Kim could do what Marvin could do solo, perhaps even become a female Marvin Gaye herself. To that end, tasked with giving Kim something to get her teeth into, they come up with, essentially, a female version of Marvin’s extraordinary Baby Don’t You Do It, a turbocharged romp of a record that sounded like it would never end. Quite atypical for a Golden Age Motown cut, but the recipe does indeed work just as well for Kim as it had for Marvin, and not coincidentally this ends up being more of a gas than practically anything we’ve heard out of Hitsville since… well, since Baby Don’t You Do It.
In fact, if anything, this one’s even more exhilarating; irresistible in its crazed, danceable glory, the giddy rush of rolling too fast down a steep hill in a shopping cart, sandblasting away the cobwebs. The backing vocals are sublime, the tune is catchy and full of subtle changes – there’s even a putative middle eight, complete with key change, that crops up in a vain attempt to calm things down for a few seconds before giving up – but the star of the show is Kim herself, revelling in the spotlight. Honestly, if you’d handed this to me back when I first started to discover Motown, and told me that this lady was Motown’s biggest star of the mid-Sixties, I’d have had no trouble believing it.
I was already won over well before Kim and the band gather their strength for a blazing final all-out attack on the senses – I said I wouldn’t beg, I said I wouldn’t plead!, she roars, the whole thing by now feeling like it’s about to burst, crackling with so much overclocked energy you want to reach over to the turntable and make sure the record isn’t physically getting too hot to touch. It’s sensational.
Not for the first time (and not for the last), yet another record is jipped out of a 10/10 score just because there aren’t enough places in my personal Top 50 to bring another one on board. But listening to this again, and writing down my thoughts like this, I was so, so sorely tempted to do the unthinkable and throw something else overboard to make room. Once again, if you told me this was your favourite Motown record of all time, well, I couldn’t really argue the pick.
MOTOWN JUNKIES VERDICT
(I’ve had MY say, now it’s your turn. Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment, or click the thumbs at the bottom there. Dissent is encouraged!)
You’re reading Motown Junkies, an attempt to review every Motown A- and B-side ever released. Click on the “previous” and “next” buttons below to go back and forth through the catalogue, or visit the Master Index for a full list of reviews so far.
(Or maybe you’re only interested in Kim Weston? Click for more.)
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Kim Weston “Don’t Compare Me With Her” |
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Motown Junkies 
Wow! Am I the first one to comment? It is impossible to pick my favorite Motown single of all time, but if forced to, this would be it. Every second of this record is absolutely perfect! Nixon, you have done such a great job at describing it that my words would seem futile. I have never been able to put my finger on what makes this record so perfect – it just is! In some ways, this is NOT a “typical Motown record” but it does have all the earmarks of one. I can’t picture any other female at Motown doing this song justice. Diana Ross would get lost in the production. As great as she it, I feel like Martha Reeves would overdo it. This record has KIM written all over it. Funny, I do like the Isley Bros version almost as much as I like Kim’s In fact, I heard the Isleys’ version first. Jermaine Jackson even did an okay version on his first album. And I do really like some of the Doobie Bros music but CANNOT STAND THEIR VERSION AT ALL! (I still think it is cool that they at least attempted to do the song). Also, I actually understand why KIm’s version wasn’t a hit. There was so much great stuff going on in the song that I feel as though the average Top 40 listener just couldn’t wrap their ears around it (their loss!) Again, this is an example of “just a tad too much R&B feel to become a crossover hit.” Many, many great records do not have “HIT” written all over them. Also, this is one of those songs that I could play several times a day & not ever get tired of!
And, yes, Nixon I forgive you for not giving this a 10!
PS – Do you have of our Canadian friends remember a version of this song that came out (right around the same time as the Doobies in 1975) by a female singer named Charity Brown who is Canadian? Her version was a note for note copy of Kim’s. I remember hearing it on a Rate the Record segment of American Bandstand.
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I remember this entering the Billboard Hot 100 at quite a high position for a Motown record, and then it just stalled. Looking at Billboard’s regional charts at the time, its popularity seemed to have peaked in the various areas on different weeks. If they had all coincided, it would have been a much bigger hit.
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Absoslutley agree with everything you said, Nixon, except for the score. Such an obivous 10 – how could you have stooped so low and given it a 9? One of my favourite records of all time – a soulful masterpiece. Can’t think of a single flaw in this record.
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I’m not going to argue with any of that – there are just 50+ others that do it for me a bit more. Manifestly unfair 🙂
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This is a 10 for me. It just has everything I look for in a Motown record. Once again, it was one of those I was sure was going to get to pop number one (like I’ll Keep Holding On”) but it didn’t even come close. But it’s lived on for me going on 48 years and it’s probably in my all time top 5 Motown records.
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Like others have said, it’s possibly just “too R&B” for an unknown act (as Kim largely was) to have taken the charts by storm. Eh, it’s the charts’ loss.
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Why limit yourself to a certain number of 10’s? If a record deserves a 10, give it a 10. This gem certainly deserves it. It is one of the ten best Motown records of all time!
By the way, Nixon, your analysis of this record gets you another 10. I place no limits on the number of perfect scores I can give you!
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The 10s are my personal top 50, my own version of the Motown 50 collection – that’s what a ten means. Almost anything with a 9 could theoretically have made the list. This was one of the more wrenching decisions!
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Having been through the process – and in a much more limited timeframe! – I sympathize with the dilemma. There are simply more than fifty absolute knockout glorious masterpieces in the Motown canon. I might have been happy with sixty-five or so, limiting myself to 1959-1971, at which point my Motown focus narrowed a bit – meaning I rather lost track of everybody but Stevie and Smokey (which means, of course, that I’ll have some bracing discoveries to make…)…But how wonderful to feel Motown returning to form!
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Along with the rest of the peanut gallery, this one is a 10 for me. Like others, I heard the Doobie Brothers version 1st, and while it’s not bad….Kim & The Funk Brothers just knock it out of the park from the first note and show that the original is still the best. At least the Doobies version exposed some people to the song who may have never heard it before.
Great review….enjoy reading this site & all the comments!
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I was probably a little hard on the Doobie Bros. I do agree that at least they gave this song some good exposure. Maybe if Michael McDonald had been at the helm it might have turned out different. A few short years later, the Doobies did a decent remake of Marvin Gaye’s “Little Darling I Need You”,
Have you ever heard the Isley Bros’ version? As I said before, it is very good too. Interesting that there are several other versions of this song by :
Jermaine Jackson (not bad)
Charity Brown (almost note for note copy of Kim’s from 1975)
Phil Collins (actually not that bad! He stays pretty close to the original arrangement)
Claudja Berry (techno/disco version – whatever!)
Jerry Butler & Brenda Lee Eager (not bad — but they try a little too hard to make it sound “relevant & funky” — came out in 1973)
Blood Sweat & Tears (their version is a bit slower & bluesier — interesting version)
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Let’s not forget that the very first version of this song was recorded by none other than Eddie Holland himself!
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Using the very same backing track. Eddie sounds hoarse and out of his element on it…not at all like the Jackie Willson wannabe he was.
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I like Eddies version a lot!!!!!!
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It’s good we all are hearing things differently. Sometimes a song I never cared for gets a huge rave by someone who loves it and I’ll go back and listen again- sometimes I’m surprised to find that I’ve caught the enthusiasm for something someone else showed. I’ll have to go back to Eddie’s version. For me, it’s interesting- I think my ears are so used to Kim’s that it was kind of a shock to find out Eddie had done this one before Kim, and with the same backing track. I’ll give it another try!
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Interesting you should mention Phil Collins’ version, as I almost touched on it in the review! His Motown covers are always done with the greatest love and respect, I don’t think anyone can doubt his honest and sincere adoration of the music and the ladies and gentlemen who made it – I just find them a bit pointless, probably for that very reason.
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Over here in the states, with “oldies” stations getting rid of 60’s titles due to demographics issues, the Doobie Bros. & Phill Collins Motown remakes may be the only way these songs stay on terrestrial radio sad to say 😦
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Amen! You’re lucky these days if you can get “My Guy” or “The Way You Do The Things You Do”. If you do, its a holiday weekend.
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Hell, Baltimore no longer even HAS an oldies station…the last one ran weekends only on the local Lite FM outlet.
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Go to WPFW, 89.3, Washington , DC on Saturday mornings beginning at 5am with Millie Ware.
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Brenda Lee Eager sounds amazing on everything she sings. Shes in my top 3 Female Vocalist. (after Linda Jones and Phyllis Hyman)
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The musicians were cooking that night and Kim wasd just doing Kim as usual. I guess because of the way the band was quaking, Kim’s intensity didnt overwhelm the overall performance like it could have. Its one of Motown’s edgier records. If those guys had played behind Ronnie, Rudy, and O’Kelly Isley they might have earned a 9/10 also.
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There’s an mix featuring an alternate vocal where Kim, bless her heart, I believe she pulled out EVERY LAST STOP there ever was. She went up and away, beyond Heaven. It’s an astonishing performance, but I can understand why THAT one wasn’t used for as the single release.
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Mr. Nixon, my one and only is wrapping up a 19 day trip to the UK this week and has visited Scotland, Ireland, and Wales so far. My point is is that I would love to have been on the trip to have the opportunity to interface with you for a few hours or so. I really love your takes, and this from someone from “Across The Pond” no less.
As the previous posters have said, your review is higher than the record. The thing that slayed me was your take on Ms. Weston not crossing over due to her being of a darker complexion… ….First of all, Ms. Weston is one of the top 5 beautiful women of all time!!!!!!!My wife is is at the top of that list of course, but Kim is up there. Putting myself in a time capsule, the biggest objection to promoting Ms. Weston was probably at West Grand Blvd. As a race of people in 1965 we did not value the diversity in hues that we have over the years embraced. Patti Labelle was told specifically that she was too dark to make it, how did that work out? Also it is a R+B performance! There is no way that this would have done the numbers it should have ,because what makes it a great record, is probably what held it back. HDH strike again! Bully for them that what every writer strives for, happened yet again for them in the form of others wanting to record the song as well. I cannot think of anyone in the stable of artists except, Ms. Knight, who wasn’t at the label yet, who could have done as well as Kim did with this song.
Going back to Ms. Weston, I recently got Year 1966 of The Motown Singles Collection and never envied Marvin Gaye before, but there are three pictures of Marvin and Kim being “lovey-dovey” and she either had untapped abilities as an actress or she liked what Marvin was doing to her soul, that looking at it makes me feel it is a private moment and then I turn away.
The song is a 9. I think I might have dropped by a peg because the Doobies version is in my head.
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Thanks Henry. Just so as I’m clear, the dark skin thing isn’t *my* take, it’s an argument others have made over the years to “explain” why Motown would sign a massive natural asset like Kim and then let her wither on the vine. (Even Nelson George couldn’t resist getting in on that angle.) I personally hold no truck with it, and I share your opinion of her physical appearance.
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I don’t have to worry about restricting my 10s to fifty, but even if I did, this is a perfect 10 for a perfect record.
Go on, Steve. Change your mark to 10. You know you want to!
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Nope, that never, ever happens – it’s the only line I decided never to cross, or the other 630 would be up for endless reevaluation too. (Plus I’d have to boot something else out of my rop fifty, which… no.) Is this the most universally acclaimed record we’ve had so far?
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Who would ever have believed that someone in the legal profession would have been so worried about “precedence”?!!!
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Hard to believe, I know! I just don’t want that particular can of worms opened up, or I’d never write any new entries because I was too busy tinkering with old scores to better reflect how I felt that day…
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“Rop”? Stupid phone.
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A glowing, booming, “ain’t no doubt about it” 10 for me. One of Motown’s finest moments… pure perfection in every way.
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This was the first Weston record that was genuinely teenager-accessible. It’s a roller coaster of a song, made to easily seduce those who gobbled Heat Wave, Nowhere To Run, and all of the Tops, Temps and Supremes records since their respective breakthroughs. At 11, I didn’t have to ask myself twice, ‘do I really like this?’ 48 years later, both sides of Gordy 7046 are still close friends, welcome everyday.
Released September 2, 1965, this is the gateway back to school record as I headed into 6th grade and faced Sister Maria Sancta. I’m old enough now to see things from her point of you, and if you’re tasked with controlling a room full of forty 12-year-old boys, you need to be a little intimidating. I specifically remember her announcing one day in class, “you know, you boys are old enough to start using deodorant.” So I did.
Here they all come now: the great Supremes game-changer, a happy David Ruffin again, followed by a playful Eddie, Marvin acing a treasure of Smokey rhymes, a bracingly mature Martha, Tammi’s emergence, the first Jimmy Ruffin I heard on a radio, more fantastic Miracles and Tops, Stevie’s thumbnose to those counted him out, ever more goodies from the Shotgun album, and a pair of Marvelettes performances that threaten to tent any fellow’s trousers. How well they all got me through that final year of Catholic grade school.
But back to Kim. No tambourine on any Motown record made me this glad since the happy dancing one in the center of Wells’ “You Lost The Sweetest Boy.” And I certainly agree about how Weston does not foster any pity with the way she delivers these lyrics. The woman sounds like she could blow down a brick wall with that voice.
I had no worry this one wouldn’t finish in the green. 🙂
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Dave L.
You’re spot on about the tambourine. I think You Lost The Sweetest Boy has the best tambourine on a Motown record – bar none. (It’s also my favorite Motown 45 – bar none.) But this is definitely a close second. When I was a kid, I actually used to play air tambourine to these records!
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Coughreflectionscough
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Thanks Dave – I love reading your personal recollections. People often encourage me to turn this blog into a book, but actually it’s your book – on growing up with Motown – I’d want to read.
On it coming up green: oh, it was never going to be anything else. There are a few nasty surprises in store for y’all before we’re done here, but this was never one of ’em – it was third from last to be excised from the 50 playlist, there practically right up until the end. When writing the review (and again when reading the comments), I felt maybe I’d made a mistake. But listening again to the 50 I’ve actually ended up with, there’s simply nowhere for it to go.
Again, I’d recommend everyone try the same “just 50 classics” exercise some time – I found out a lot about myself through doing it, and it really focuses the mind.
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ya, whattsup with a fixed number of “tens”? we all know this is one, why pretend it isn’t just to satisfy a ill advised and self imposed whim?
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Self-imposed, certainly. I’ll let you look at the number of comments and decide whether it’s ill-advised…
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Well, it is completely arbitrary. Why not 60 instead of 50? Logically, there are no degrees of perfection; a record is either perfect, or it isn’t. It’s like having a small club from which potential members who have the right to be there have been unjustly excluded.
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🙂 It’s not arbitrary – for a start, it’s my response to Motown 50 – and it’s not about perfection, it’s about my own personal fifty favourites. (Which, not coincidentally, was as low as I found myself able to go when picking X favourites, before it became genuinely arbitrary as to what got in and what was left out.) You should try it yourself some time, it’s a very interesting exercise.
As for why not 60, well, why not 70? Why not (say) 144? Or however many I think “deserve” top marks? The line has to be drawn somewhere, or it becomes entirely meaningless. The positioning of that line is always going to be subjective, so 50 seemed about right.
To underline again, it’s not about perfection – I understand anything with a 9, and even some of the 8s, are “perfect” to a lot of people (and I know the marking system is confusing when I use 10 in that sense, in the flow of text when talking about something else, to anoint “extra” non-single ones like e.g. Knock On My Door or Then You Changed). But the top 50 are my personal top 50, which seems as good a criteria as any other for dishing out top marks. And ultimately, while this is brilliant, there are more than 50 Motown singles I personally like better than it.
But look, if it bothers people that much… If we were picking a top 55? This, the last two Miracles singles, and 2 more we’ve yet to meet which I’m anticipating will cause just as much gnashing of teeth (especially when you see what DOES make it in…) 🙂
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(I should add, the Motown 50 thing (itself the result of an online fan vote, albeit the results were apparently “massaged” to prevent it being 50 Supremes, Diana and Michael Jackson tracks) isn’t just an idle comparison – I’ve done this for real, turning my 10s into a 50-track playlist and whittling it down that way (from about 100 contenders, many of which I’d thought were sure things) by listening to it for weeks on end. I really like what I’ve ended up with, though I’m sure it’s not everyone’s cup of tea!)
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Of course -as always- dissent is encouraged.
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😀
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You have WAY more patience than i do. How many times do you have to remind people how this thing works???
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Nah, part of the reason I give marks at all is to stimulate debate like this. I like hearing (and publishing) opposing opinions.
Without checking, I think this is the most universal acclaim a song has ever gotten here on Motown Junkies – I was expecting at least one person to dislike the song (or at least react with a shrug), as I believe has happened for every other high number. Kim might have become the champion!
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I am now really looking forward to the review of Kim’s “Helpless” and the consequent comments.
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Here’s a link to the original version of the song by Eddie Holland. The instrumental track is the same one used for Kim Weston.
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It’s a great take (though Eddie surely is blown out of the water by Kim’s astonishing performance), one of the real discoveries of the Cellarful series, but it’d be a bit misleading of me to call it the original version (although that’s obviously technically what it is); Eddie had turned his back on a serious recording career by this stage, and so that’s essentially a glorified demo, a proof of concept with a guide vocal. It’s also plenty special in its own right, of course!
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One quick comment on the whole “dark-skinned” thing…You can’t see or hear skin tone on a 45 and since Ms Weston didnt have a fan club the only way you knew what she looked like was going to her shows, perusing the Lp she recorded with Marvin Gaye or watching a staurday afternoon edition of American Bandstand.
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Hi! I always thought it was interesting that author Nelson George was the one who gave a very unflattering description of Miss Weston – as “dark skinned” & overweight in his book “Where Did Our Love Go”. He claimed that audiences laughed at her. Say what? Not sure what Mr. George was thinking. I think Miss Weston looks very nice in all pictures of her. It was an absolute crime that Motown never put out a regular album release on her (with the exception of her duet collection with Marvin Gaye).
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@ Landini—i don’t remember anyone laughing at her and she certainly was not overweight. She was quite curvy like most women at that time. As you said she was a very attractive woman.
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We may be getting off topic here… but… I do recall Mr. George making the statements. My take is that he was simply being the reporter. I unfortunately can very clearly see people of color in 1965 due to insecurity, laughing at her, to feel better about themselves. I recall some of the hurtful things that were said back then, among ourselves, which all these years later , as I am typing this make me cringe.
If we may get back to the song. I could see Miss Weston perhaps adopting a take no prisoners approach to recording the song, as a way of saying, “give me material which reflects what is popular today(1965), and no one can do it like me”. What a terrible catch 22 see was caught up in. The good songs went to others because they could cross over, her love interest at the time was running A & R, so Mr. Stevenson may have gone out of his way to not appear partial to her. Through it all, she held her head up, and to this day, I don’t think I have ever heard her complain.
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I have to agree about that moment of the book. Since the internet, you can google images of Weston, and she’s an absolute knockout of a woman. In fact, I can’t think of any moderately visible Motown woman of the 60s anyone would call fat, including Florence in the last days before she was shafted. If Ross is considered the ‘standard,’ then yes, every other girl looks more filled out, but hardly fat.
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Nelson didn’t say she was overweight- what he did comment on was the theory that mainstream America may have had a problem with a particular part of Kim’s physique: her posterior. George remarked that Kim had- I’m gonna put it this way: Kim had a Beyonce / Kim Kardashian form before it was in fashion. At least that’s what Nelson seemed to harp on. I read that and just thought how unnecessary all of that was. I understand he was trying to theorize various reasons for Kim’s lack of mainstream success but I felt he was hugely out of line. I’ve seen Kim on various television shows (most notoriously, that appearance on Hullabaloo where she seemed precariously perched on the world’s tallest podium!) and I NEVER saw anything like what Nelson was talking about. And even if Kim had the Kim Kardashian body before it was in style, so what?
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You may not be able to see skin tone on the radio, but you can hear soul and funk…and this record, awesome as it is, might have been a bit TOO funky for 1965 Top 40. We’re still more than a year out from Aretha’s and Stax’ assaults on the airwaves, not to mention Whitfield’s decidedly “blacker” sounding Tempts & Knight hits.
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Think about what Ms. Weston is saying,”Take Me In My Arms Rock Me A Little While”. Being born in 55, I was too young to have been around when the term “Rock and Roll” was known by all “Hep Cats” to be code for sexual relations. My point being that this assertive woman was asking/demanding sex at a time when that was not the norm in popular music, or two years prior to Aretha’s “Respect”, when things loosened up.
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It’s a very good point, and while male acts also had to be equally coy and skirt around the real issue at hand at this time, as a woman Kim was definitely facing a double battle (triple if we bring race into it) to get the message across and accepted on daytime radio.
It’s arguable that even here in 2013 the pendulum still hasn’t completely swung to the point where a woman being sexually direct or aggressive isn’t taken as some sort of shock to the system; the hand-wringing over Azealia Banks’ awesome “212” is a prime example.
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Wow what a huge response. When I first came in contact with Motown at age nine, things like You Can’t Hurry Love , What Becomes of the Broken Hearted, and Jimmy Mack were staple items. It took a few years to become acclimated to the more soulful releases. But this is one of them. I love it more than ever. It’s also getting more airplay on best of 60’s/70’s/80’s Stations than it ever did in 1965. The Isley Bros, This old Heart of Mine is another. No dissent here. 9/10
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I’d also give this a 10. It’s perfect. Kim didn’t look fat. yes, I’m Canadian, and yes, I remember Charity Brown’s version. Limiting to 50 10s is cheating people out of their perfect records’ status.
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Kim Weston had such a strong voice!! Yes, it’s another H-D-H classic!! Also, “Helpless” which I first heard on the “16 Motown Hits” Volume 6!! Awesome!
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Added the European picture sleeve, which should have gone up at the time the review was posted. Ah well, better late than never!
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Another great one that I’d never heard. Well, I guess I might vaguely recall the Doobie Bros. version but if I did hear it, it didn’t make much an impression. The Weston version is definitely making an impression!
The verse is the bVII-IV-I progression that was coming in about this time – with Nowhere to Run often cited as an early example. But this song, now that I’ve looked it up, had an Eddie Holland version from 1964 on that light blue album, so even earlier.
But the striking thing is the other part: v minor, V sus, v minor, VI … and then … right back to the verse directly from the VI chord. It’s unintuitive but very cool. The Beatles didn’t do anything like this exact progression, but they used this concept of freeing themselves from the tyranny of not being able to use chords that aren’t supposed to follow each other. It’s like … Tin Pan Alley followed the circle of 5th, then rock (starting with that bVII IV bit) started going backwards around the circle, but this, and The Beatles, felt free to simply ignore the gravitational pull of the circle altogether.
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As someone who knows a little about music theory, I really appreciate your analyses of this and other Motown songs!
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Alright, I’ll be the hundredth (thousandth?) person to say this is an easy 10, one of my favorite Motown songs from one of my favorite Motown voices. Everyone’s already described everything that’s so amazing about it. I first came across it on the 1959-1971 box set and it was love-at-first-listen. One of those songs that gives you chills. Got to be one of the best intros of any song – that take-charge tambourine, followed by Kim’s seductive voice rising out of the silence. When the band comes in, it’s like a ray of light streaming into a dark room. And really cool to think of this song as a variation of Baby Don’t You Do It.
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The lyrics to this song are sexier than you realize. 😉
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