The Four Tops are wonderful, and right now, like the rest of their labelmates, songwriters, producers, musicians, and – heck – probably the people at the pressing plants, they can do no wrong. (9)
A fine effort in its own right, and the vocals are lovely, but everyone involved had already moved on, and HDH were right to finally let it go. (6)
It’s pretty good, I guess, and yet I’ve never warmed to it, never thrilled to it, never breathlessly gone straight back to the beginning to play it again. (6)
Messy but still full-on excellent, shambling towards greatness; it’s a rush, a buzz, a gas, utterly irresistible in its demented glee. (8)
Based solely on its reputation, this seemed like it might be a chance to ease up on the flow of constant praise we’ve had recently – but no, this one’s absolutely fine by me. (8)
A bitter, lonely stalk of a song, all the better for Levi Stubbs to climb right to the top. (7)
I don’t know if a record can ever be “magnificently adequate”, which sounds like a veiled criticism even though that’s both exactly how I feel, and not at all what I mean. So instead, I’ll put it more positively: everything about this is just right. (8)
It’s just lacking that final spark, that something extra which would take the song into the realms of greatness, rather than it being pleasing but ultimately inconsequential. Of course, I suppose when something’s this pleasing, it hardly matters. (6)
If I still don’t entirely trust that massive, sweeping chorus, it’s a record that’s nonetheless been creeping up and up and up in my estimation, to the point where I thought I’d better finish writing this before the song barged its way any further up the scale. (8)
It’s the sound that makes this work, the sound of the Four Tops and the Andantes hooking it all up, turning base metal into gold. Even the most hackneyed, hoary old material could sound angelic in their hands, and so this – buffed up to a fine sheen by its writer-producers – turns out very well. (6)
It’s not all that good, and if I didn’t know that they’d dust themselves off and make some of the best records in history, I’d be worried. As it is, I’m just really disappointed – this could, and should, have been fantastic. (4)
