Category Archives: motown weekends

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Song of the Day #373: ‘Do You Love Me?’ – The Contours

contoursFor better or worse (probably worse), my main association with this song is that scene in Dirty Dancing. Not being a 35-45 year old woman, I don’t consider Dirty Dancing a cultural touchstone of great importance. It was an enjoyable but truly ridiculous movie with some memorable dialogue. Nobody puts Baby in the corner, indeed.

This song plays the first time Baby (Jennifer Grey) happens upon the titular activity. She walks into a packed dance hall, watermelon in hand, and sees dozens of couples performing dance moves that would get them arrested in a majority of these United States. And this is in 1963!

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Song of the Day #360: ‘Reach Out I’ll Be There’ – Four Tops

fourtops2This, of course, is the other ‘I’ll Be There’ with which I confused the Jackson 5 song. It’s every bit as much a classic, and arguably more so.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m sort of at a loss for words when it comes to these Motown Weekends because I don’t have a ton of associations with the songs. Thank god Michael Jackson died and gave me fodder to write about over the past couple of weekends. In fact, on future weekends I might just treat these as a break from writing and simply present the lyrics. I’ll play it by ear.

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Song of the Day #359: ‘I’ll Be There’ – The Jackson 5

jackson5I’ve seen many mentions of ‘I’ll Be There’ since Michael Jackson’s death and every time I read the title I thought of an entirely different song (see tomorrow’s Song of the Day for that one). I didn’t remember Michael and the rest of the 5 singing that track, but I assumed they must have.

And then I YouTubed “Jackson 5 I’ll Be There” the other day, found this clip, and suddenly it all came back to me. Such a sweet and touching love song, even when performed by a pre-pubescent kid. Maybe especially when performed by a pre-pubescent kid. This one, anyway.

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