Five Under Appreciated Motown Songs

Motown. Who doesn't love it? The storied Detroit-based record label run by Berry Gordy, Jr. fused pop, r&b, soul, and gospel, and whatever else was around, into bite-sized two or three minute songs handed down to the fans by stylish, ultra-talented African-American singers the likes of which white America (and if you take Oprah's word on it, Black America) had never before seen. 

Motown stars and their songs became favorites all over the world. Motown became synonymous with "hit music" in the sixties. Hitsville, USA, in fact, is the name of the building where Motown used to be housed in its heyday. Smokey Robinson. Diana Ross. Stevie Wonder. Marvin Gaye. The hits from Hitsville,  literally, just kept coming. 

And forty years later, many Motown hits are still on our radios, playing at our wedding receptions and filling the soundtracks of our movies. Baby boomers still crank them up. Teeny-boppers watch contests belt them out on American Idol. Some Motown hits retain a place in our collective jukebox almost half a century since they first hit the charts. They're not on the Billboard Top Twenty anymore, but they've never gone out of style.

Think about it and you can hear those Motown classics now. The infectious guitar twang leading up to the Temptations declaration that they've got sunshine on a cloudy day; that pounding bassline that cues Marvin Gaye to tell Tammi Terrell, listen baby, ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low, ain't no river wide enough to keep him from getting to her; that weird space-aged whiring sound then - bam- we get our marching orders from Diana, Flo and Mary - Stop. In the name of love. Yes, these classic Motown songs get overplayed, badly covered, and turned into commercials, but they're always with us, and in their original form, in moderation,  we will always love them.