When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You Marvin Gaye
Label: Motown
Released: 1978
On his in 1978 double album release, Here My Dear, Marvin Gaye chronicled the disintegration of his ill fated marriage to Anna Gordy in a bracingly explicit fashion. Fans used to Gaye’s sweet, seductive sounds were shocked at blunt bitterness on display on this epic divorce album. Rather than cooing sweet lines such as “let’s get it on,” Gaye croons lyrics such as “how could you turn me into the police” and “you have scandalized my name.” Despite the frankness of the lyrics, Gaye backs them with a lush, funky orchestration that’s groovy and irresistible, making this a dark horse classic in his catalogue.
Long before Justin Bieber, Nick Jonas, and even before young Michael Jackson, little Stevie Wonder had all the girls combatively running after him, owning the term child idol. Despite being blind from birth, by age eleven Stevie caught the interest of record producer Berry Gordy Jr. and was signed to Motown Records at the age of eleven. A few years after landing his record deal, Stevie found early success with his song “Fingertips (Pt. 2),” released when he was thirteen years old. If that doesn’t say much, Wonder played a large role in bringing synthesizers (keyboards for everyone else) to the forefront of popular music as it was Wonder’s urging that led Raymond Kurzweil to create the first electronic synthesizers that reproduced the sounds of orchestral instruments. So enjoy this selection from one of the most influential artists ever; after all it’s just from the guy who has won 22 Grammy Awards (the most any male solo artist had ever) and received the Gershwin Award for Lifetime Achievement presented by president Obama.
By the time they recorded this Norman Whitfield track, The Jackson 5’s longtime association with Motown was slowly coming to an end. The brothers were bristling under Berry Gordy’s bubblegum thumb, eager to explore the kind of epic funk exemplified here, but on their own terms. (When the boys implore, “Play it, Tito!” it’s not Tito who responds.) Two years later, with the exception of Jermaine, they jumped to CBS, where they became captains of their own success rather than the cherubic front for armies of songwriters and session musicians. Little Michael, rest his soul, topped them all by becoming a worldwide institution, an icon for all time. Some 40 years after their debut—breathless trails of headlines aside—the lasting essence of the Jackson legacy is the ability to evolve past childhood novelty into an independent creative force. We didn’t have to just dance and hum along.
Despite their moniker’s obvious allure and an impressive battery of hits, by the early 1970s the original Temptations were slowly coming apart. David Ruffin had packed his bark and split in 1968, followed three years later by a partner who swung so sweetly for the stars: Eddie Kendricks, with tones on loan from Heaven. The feather-light “Eddie’s Love” floated down the otherwise heavy stream of Kendricks’ sophomore solo sojourn, People…Hold On (1972), which found the ex-Tempt fretting over Vietnam and social unrest, among other topical subjects. But once he warmed that falsetto over a pep-in-the-step groove and sang of the simplicity of he and she, all the world was sun and moon. When Eddie was on, Eddie was it.
It’s hard to believe that Michael’s gone. My fingers still hesitate to type those words. Despite the long, tawdry trail of headlines, controversies, schoolyard digs, surgeries, and eccentricities that dogged his every post-Thriller move, the man’s talents should not be overshadowed or denied. He escaped youth’s cruel novelty, maturing from the pint-sized frontman of a talented young band of Gary, Indiana, brothers into a successful solo artist, producer, and self-proclaimed King of Pop. In all incarnations he was nothing less than a cultural force. But in 1974 the 16-year-old was still just getting started. “What You Don’t Know” finds him far beyond pipsqueak bleats of playground love; here he restlessly obsesses over the heartbreaker who walked away. The discotheque scruff, with its brotherly streams of “no” and “know,” fits the desperation perfectly, and Michael pleads his dance-floor case with an ease that will be missed.
