This should have been the A-side; this should have been the way the Miracles approached My Girl Has Gone. Should, should, should. What it is, though, is another excellent Temptations single. We won’t be meeting them again for six months; Don’t Look Back is good enough to make that temporary parting hurt. (8)
It’s not bad, and I’ll never turn down the chance to hear the golden-era Miracles doing what they do best. It’s just that after all the riches they’ve given us recently, and with all the riches they’re going to be giving us just around the corner, this feels like a stopgap, and therefore something of a let-down. (5)
It’s not great – it’s weird and it’s been poorly thought out, and what’s more it’s badly dated, as well as musically derivative of a much better song Marvin had already recorded. Still, even if it says very little about the Marvin Gaye we’ve come to know here in 1965, you can’t really accuse it of being dull, and that’s worth a couple of marks in itself. (5)
Sumptuous in its beauty, quietly devastating in its lyrics… I don’t know how he’s doing this. (8)
If My Girl isn’t in your fifty top Motown tunes, I fear nothing can be done for you. (10)
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)
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)
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)
It’s all pretty workmanlike; perfectly adequate B-side fodder, listenable enough, but not anything to linger over. (5)
It’s a testament to the strength of Smokey’s songwriting, and the excellent vocal he turns in here, that even a “Miracles by the numbers” job like this is still better than some groups’ best efforts. (5)
That it came coupled with one of the all-time great Motown ballads is just unfortunate, because this is a fun little single in its own right. (6)
