Friday, August 26, 2016

The Heart of Rock and Soul # 870 The Supremes


'The Ronettes once alleged that the best part of breakin' up is in the makin' up but you could never prove it with a jukebox. Second chances apparently aren't within the province of rock and soul. After all you and I could name hundreds, if not thousands of songs about getting together and falling apart, but there are damn few classics about getting back together.

Holland-Dozier-Holland delivered such a song to the Supremes, the first of Motown's many jokes - you know the kind of thing where they put out Someday We'll Be Together and then announce The Supremes were splitting up, or gave Dave Ruffin My Whole World Ended (The Moment You Left Me), as his first single after leaving The Temptations. Here, Diana swears her love affair deserves a second chance because she was swindled out of him the first time through the advice of her (real life) friends and partners Mary and Flo, who it turns out are having their own romantic problems, so who are they to say that Diana's guy is a bum? (since her real life guy at the time was Berry Gordy, the answer should have been as obvious as their last royalty check.

Anyway HDH were so taken with their success here that they used fundamentally the same melody for The Supremes' next single Nothing But Heartaches and paid the price: Back In My Arms had been the group's fifth Number One in a row, and Heartaches broke the string.' 





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