This is like the Rosetta Stone of dance music; you can hear the Holland/Dozier/Holland sense of rhythm in all that we call dance music today. The great early Supremes records are perfect variations on a similar theme, with a one-two rhythm structure that makes even the least confident of dancers feel okay shaking it (this is similar to how trance’s beats are all 1s. To wit: standard pop rhythm structure is 1-2-3-4, the first Supremes classics are 1-2-1-2, and trance is 1-1-1-1).
“Where Did Our Love Go,” long before the epic Soft Cell cover, is a textbook example of what makes the Supremes a fundamental part of music history: a driving and relentless rhythm section orchestrated perfectly with hooks and a great vocal performance. “Baby Love” is just as legendary, and just as rhythmically tough. “Stop in The Name of Love works in some minor key experimentations that must have sounded like a revolution on the radio.
“I Hear A Symphony” has always been a personal favorite, but here in the midst of the best that resulted between the Holland/Dozier/Holland/Ross/Wells/Wilson collaborations, it gains the power of a Phil Spector/Tina Turner “River Deep – Mountain High” or a Five DuTones “Shake a Tail Feather,” one of those records
that makes time stop such is its structural and emotional perfection. My, I do go on.
Just before the 1967 shift to ‘Diana Ross & the Supremes,’ there’s a shift in the kind of records that the group was making, becoming more musically experimental. “You Keep Me Hanging On” is actually kind of a weird-sounding record, and quite intriguing to compare with Kim Wilde’s much more traditional 1986 cover. Likewise, “Love is Here and Now You’re Gone” is a strange record that is structured as if in opposition to what audiences would have expected (though to put it in a contemporary dance music idiom, “Love is Here” would be the record that made extensive use of drop-outs before others), and “The Happening” is a quasi-psychedelic nugget that I had never heard before that doesn’t sound anything like classic Supremes, and yet it was a number one hit (and a great pop record), which indicates that audiences back in the 60s were a lot better suited to artists changing their sound than even we are today.
“Reflections” is a marvel, even today, with all sorts of strange little vweepy noises, and while “Love Child” feels a little like an Afterschool Special to today’s listeners, its social impact at its time of release cannot be underestimated.
And, as a testament to the Supremes’ influence, who can forget Sweet Sensation’s epic Latin disco cover of it? While on the subject, let’s think about the countless covers and samplings of these hits that we’ve heard over the years. Evelyn Thomas’ version of “Reflections” was an early mainstay of the first incarnation of Almighty Records, there’s the aforementioned Soft Cell take on “Where Did Our Love Go,” Phil Collins’ bland-but-still-kind-of-interesting “You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Someday We’ll Be Together” is sampled in Janet Jackson’s “If,” and, moving into Miss Ross’ solo hits, “Love Hangover” has been sampled inordinately, with its slow part giving rise to Monica’s “The First Night” and “Hands On Experience” by High-N-Mighty, while its uptempo disco part forms the basis of Will Smith’s “Freakin’ It,” and “I’m Coming Out” is the spine The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Mo Money Mo Problems” is built on. That’s a pretty sizable chunk of chart and cultural vitality for songs in their third or fourth decade.
And while speaking of Miss Ross’ solo hits, while I am happy to have them here, it wouldn’t be one of my reviews unless I had some track selection quibbles, and I really wish this collection could have found room for “It’s My House,” which may be the subtlest disco masterpiece ever, or early-90s European hit “When You Tell Me That You Love Me.” It is also unfortunate that we couldn’t get some of Miss Ross’s RCA tracks, as “Swept Away,” “Chain Reaction,” and “Missing You” are all classics in their own right. Of course, you can get all these tracks on other comps, but it would have been a nice extra for this one.
