Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era [Hardcover]

Herb Jordan (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2006

Here at last: all the words to all the great love songs from the golden era of Motown, when the Motown sound dominated the charts and kids fell in love, broke up, and fell in love again to its irresistibly danceable hits.

Born in inner-city Detroit but loved by people all around the world, the songs of Motown remain unmistakable and unforgettable: “I’ll Be There,” “My Girl,” “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “Please Mr. Postman,” “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” From the tender beginnings of romance to the heartbreak of good-bye, Motown’s legendary songwriters and performers captured all the nuances of love in what became some of the most beloved songs of our time. Motown Records left behind an unequaled legacy of popular music that was both sophisticated and streetwise, achingly emotional and the epitome of cool.

This vibrant collection of lyrics enables us to sing along–not just hum along–to our favorite Motown tunes and acknowledges the contributions of the lyricists who made these celebrated records possible, from singer-songwriters Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, and Marvin Gaye to collaborators Holland-Dozier-Holland, Ashford and Simpson, and Strong and Whitfield.

With an insightful introduction by editor Herb Jordan and rare photographs of the best-known Motown musicians and writers, Motown in Love is a treasure for those who lived by the songs in the sixties and seventies, and for those just discovering them now.

Featuring all the words to:

ain’t no mountain high enough
ain’t nothing like the real thing
ain’t that peculiar
all in love is fair
as
ask the lonely
baby i need your loving
baby i’m for real
baby love
back in my arms again
beauty is only skin deep
bernadette
choosey beggar
come and get these memories
come see about me
dancing in the street
devil with a blue dress on
distant lover
do you love me
does your mama know about me
don’t look back
don’t mess with bill
every little bit hurts
fading away
for once in my life
get ready
he was really sayin’ somthin’
heat wave
hitch hike
how sweet it is to be loved by you
the hunter gets captured by the game
i can’t get next to you
i can’t help myself
i hear a symphony
i heard it through the grapevine
(i know) i’m losing you
i second that emotion
i want you back
i was made to love her
i wish it would rain
if i could build my whole world around you
if i were your woman
if it’s magic
if this world were mine
i’ll be doggone
i’ll be in trouble
i’ll be there
i’ll try something new
i’m gonna make you love me
it takes two
it’s growing
it’s the same old song
just my imagination (running away with me)
lately
let’s get it on
the love i saw in you was just a mirage
love is here and now you’re gone
love is like an itching in my heart
the love you save
love’s in need of love today
loving you is sweeter than ever
more love
my cherie amour
my girl
my girl has gone
my guy
my world is empty without you
never can say goodbye
never dreamed you’d leave in summer
nowhere to run
the one who really loves you
ooo baby baby
please mr. postman
pride and joy
reach out i’ll be there
reflections
rocket love
7 rooms of gloom
shake me, wake me (when it’s over)
shop around
signed, sealed, delivered, i’m yours
since i lost my baby
standing in the shadows of love
stop! in the name of love
stubborn kind of fellow
take me in your arms (rock me)
the tears of a clown
this old heart of mine (is weak for you)
too busy thinking about my baby
the tracks of my tears
truly yours
two lovers
until you come back to me (that’s what i’m gonna do)
up the ladder to the roof
uptight (everything’s alright)
the way you do the things you do
what becomes of the brokenhearted
what’s going on
when i’m gone
when the lovelight starts shining through his eyes
where did our love go
who’s lovin’ you
yester-me, yester-you, yesterday
you are the sunshine of my life
you beat me to the punch
you can’t hurry love
you keep me hangin’ on
your precious love
you’re a wonderful one
you’re all i need to get by
you’re my everything
you’ve really got a hold on me

Editorial Reviews

Review

Motown remembered

"Dreamgirls," a new movie starring Beyoncé Knowles, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx and American Idol reject Jennifer Hudson, aims to capture the magic of Motown. Based on the musical of the same name, "Dreamgirls" is an almost-true-to-life account of female singing trio The Dreamettes (based on The Supremes) and their climb to the top of the pop charts. The recently published book "Motown in Love" is the perfect companion to the movie, as Hollywood is sure to leave out some of the more important political moments of the era in favor of another close-up of Beyoncé. Aside from a well-crafted introduction by composer Herb Jordan, all 184 pages of the book contain only lyrics from Motown love songs. Unlike bona fide poetry that is meant to be read on the page or out loud, the song lyrics leave a bit to be desired without the brilliant and unorthodox music that went along with them.

However, the lyrics are an excellent record of the changes that occurred in Detroit and across the entire U.S. during the 1960s, such as youthful optimism (the Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love") turning to bitterness and discontent (Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On") as race riots, the Vietnam War, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Robert Kennedy made the music get serious.

Coming out of inner-city Detroit, Motown was the type of scene for which music lovers today yearn. The spirit of soul music was bursting out of churches, street corners, basements and makeshift stages set up in supermarket parking lots. Under the watchful eye of producer Berry Gordy, professional songwriters labored over the notes that became hit songs.

When lyrics are written out on a page, the cheesy rhyme that is otherwise masked by the music comes out in full force (all lyrics are guilty of this, it's not just Motown). However, the language is supposed to be simple and easy to understand, which is one of the reasons why Motown's music became so popular. Everyone could identify with it, even the suburban white kids who turned a musical anomaly into an unstoppable powerhouse.

Upon first glance, "Motown in Love" seems like a book no one would actually read.

Broken up into 10 sections, the lyrics are arranged according to theme, i.e. "Lessons of Love" and "Under Your Spell." Jordan's editing makes it easy to see how all the songs are related and why they're important as a historical body. "Motown in Love" is definitely not a beach read, but it does have its moments.

"Sugar pie, honey bunch,/ you know that I love you./ I can't help myself,/ I love you and nobody else," begins "I Can't Help Myself" by the Four Tops. It's hard to read the words without humming the melody along with them. The catchy chorus of Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" recalls his rich, soulful voice: "So take a good look at my face./You'll see my smile looks out of place./If you look closer, it's easy to trace/The tracks of my tears." Reading these lyrics will definitely make you run to your CD player or iTunes to listen to the familiar songs once more.

Valuable as a reference book and a must have for die-hard fans, "Motown in Love" successfully packages an entire movement into a dust jacket, along with a few pictures and a lot of nostalgia. -- Courtney Denison, The Wire, Portsmouth, NH (Dec. 20, 2006)

Past can jolt us to a better future

One should not be nostalgic about too many things from the past because far more often than not the memory takes the form of a wish rather than a fact. Sort of a soothing or a bitter deception. Sometimes, however, the memory is not wrong and there is proof that will remind anybody interested that it was better in certain ways than it is now. Popular music is one example.

I became even more convinced of the music's lessons in our culture as I looked at a recent documentary about the making of the forthcoming "Dreamgirls" movie and two books, "Cole Porter Selected Lyrics" and "Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era."

"Dreamgirls" is a fictionalized story of a group of young black women with allusions to the story of Motown's Diana Ross and the Supremes. Even if it does not live up to the hype, the film should remind audiences of one thing that they may have forgotten: Once upon a recent time there were black men and women who could sing notes and not merely chant gutter doggerel. The lyrics back then also did not constantly refer to men and women in demeaning and derogatory terms.

The movie will also remind audiences that there was a time when women in the music business knew that being successful did not include embracing the looks and manners of hookers or women taking a break at a strip club.

I am sure that those are the reasons beneath the mounting excitement about the "Dreamgirls" movie. Audiences are happy to get something about the so-called ghetto in which the people aren't all minstrel figures disguised behind cursing and pornography. The idea of black people who manifest human characteristics is still basically out of step with our time, but if "Dreamgirls" reiterates some positive things to the masses, popular music may begin a comeback in which actual talent is celebrated.

Yeah, right.

The book of Cole Porter lyrics and the best of the Motown lyricists might surprise people who spend too much time listening to pop .radio, where a good number of words are bleeped. Porter was about as good as one could get at the writing of lyrics, and he consistently showed off great invention, wit and sophistication.

It is unnecessary to compare the songs of Porter with those intended for adolescents, the target audience for many Motown songs. In their gleaming outfits, the Motown singers performed in the community theaters where young men and women went to learn something about how to express the feelings they might have for each other.

Because something that strong existed in popular music it is hard to believe that it has largely disappeared and been replaced by the dreck we hear delivered by those from the world of rap. But perhaps we are only in one of the valleys on the roller coaster that this culture can so often be, reaching unprecedented highs and falling to lows so far below the sewer that we cannot believe what we are witnessing.

Sometimes a revolution of consciousness arrives as the result of being reminded that people were not always so debased. Perhaps "Dreamgirls," "Cole Porter Selected Lyrics" and "Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era" will help to spark such memories. We certainly would be better off if they do. -- Stanley Crouch, New York Daily News (Dec. 21, 2006)

Dreaming of more romantic rhythms

For all the dizzying splendor ofthe hot new film Dreamgirls, for all the razzle of the costumes, the dazzle of Beyoncé, and the blinding star power of Jamie Foxx, Eddie Murphy and newcomer Jennifer Hudson, the movie's forgettable songs amount to the musical equivalent of Chinese food: They leave you craving more.

Sure, Hudson created an unforgettable moment belting out her rendition of "And I'm Telling You (I'm Not Going)," but you still wouldn't remember the words if original Dreamgirls cast member Jennifer Holliday had not sung it into R&B fame 25 years earlier.

Dreamgirls is supposed to evoke another era, a time when you snapped your fingers on the one and slow-danced in the basement and protested social ills while "giving the drummer some." But mostly it made me yearn for the music that defined the 1960s and '70s when I came of age, the voices conceding that "I ain't too proud to beg" and demanding we "say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud." Sadly, those voices - Marvin Gaye, Eddie Kendricks, David Ruffin, Melvin Franklin, Barry White, Luther Vandross, and James Brown, the Godfather of Soul - have passed too soon.

The good news is that their songs remain. Herb Jordan, a Los Angeles-based composer and scholar, compiled the lyrics penned by some of Motown's legendary songwriters in his new book, Motown in Love: Lyrics From the Golden Era .

Operating from a modest house in Detroit, Berry Gordy assembled a talented pool of singers, songwriters and musicians, most of them kids from the 'hood. Together they created the Motown sound - a sweet kind of funk with crossover appeal that had white kids dancing to a new black music called pop.

As an adult, reading the lyrics on a blank page without the propulsive beats that had me dancing in the streets as a kid, I realized the songs were poetry, with verses and phrases that drew me to the music and kept me there:

Each day through my window / I watch her as she passes by. / I say to myself, / "You're such a lucky guy." / To have a girl like her / Is truly a dream come true. / Out of all the fellas in the world / She belongs to you. / But it was just my imagination / Running away with me...

Ninety-five percent of the lyrics of those love songs were written by young black men, guys like Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland, all from the inner city, the kind of young black men we like to portray as ruthless and heartless today.

"In our culture right now, the perception of black men is completely different," Jordan tells me. "Right now the stereotypical notion of how we define our culture is, 'If you're not hard, you're not black.'

"Black culture is about all kinds of music. It's about Motown and Duke and Miles, as well as James Brown."

Can it really be about romance anymore? Can a young black man write about imagining being with his dream girl without being considered too soft? Or is the gangsta-edged, strip-infected consciousness that U.S. Sen. Barack Obama refers to as "coarsening of the culture" here to stay?

Dreamgirls reminds us that it doesn't have to be that way. It reflects a reality that often gets overshadowed these days - the hard work of our dads, the wisdom of our mothers, aspirations of us as a people. It's also a visual jewel with talented performances and nonstop entertainment. But as Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell would say: Ain't nothing like the real thing. -- Annette John-Hall, The Philadelphia Inquirer (Jan. 3, 2007)

This collection of some of the imprint's most notable lyrics gives the songwriters who toiled on the Motown assembly line some well-deserved shine. Some of the songs here are classics - Ashford and Simpson's 1967 "Ain't No Mountain High Enough", Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong's 1968 "I Heard It Through the Grapevine." But though many of the themes are universal - something Motown's lyricists specialized in - it was ultimately the voice of African-American struggle and the strive towards success that made the lyrics truly compelling. -- Mark Anthony Neal, VIBE (December, 2006)

Trembling on the Brink of a Lovely Song

Lyrics are meant to be sung, but the best of them can also be appreciated as pure poetry

When the Library of America published the first two volumes of an anthology of American poetry several years ago, I was surprised to find that alongside all the usual suspects - T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens and Langston Hughes, for example - were verses by Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer and other great American songwriters.

In retrospect, I realize that my surprise was unwarranted. I say that for two reasons.

First, English poetry anthologies have always included verses that were meant to be sung. The works of Robert Burns are the most obvious examples.

Second, for many years now, anthologists have made an effort to include contemporary song lyrics in poetry collections aimed at college students. When I was in college, for example, I was assigned a text called Beowulf to Beatles: Approaches to Poetry (The Free Press, 1972, David R. Pichaske editor). In addition to all the standard fare by John Donne, Shakespeare, Andrew Marvell, Wallace Stevens and a host of other canonical poets, it included lyrics by Jim Morrison, Bob Dylan, James Weldon Johnson, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and many other leading songwriters of the 20th century.

To some extent, this struck me as pandering - a desperate attempt by professors and textbook publishers to "relate" to students in their own "language" and to seem "relevant." And to some extent, this is precisely what was going on.

But a survey of song lyrics in this anthology and elsewhere suggests that they can, in fact, stand on their own, apart from melody. Indeed, reading them as text and/or reciting them as spoken words can deepen your appreciation of the song when you finally return to it whole.

I was reminded of this recently when a new book arrived in the mail. It's called Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era (Pantheon, Herb Jordan, editor). I had never thought of Motown lyrics as poetry, but this volume makes a case that some of them, at least, deserve, to be considered as such.

The book's purpose, according to the publisher, is to "enable us to sing along - not just hum along - to our favorite Motown tunes...." But its potential impact is much greater than that. "As a songwriter," says Alicia Keys, "just seeing [these lyrics] on the page makes me want to grab a pen and paper and search my heart for the perfect words."

Many of them were perfect - or as close to it as any human heart and imagination can come.

As Port Folio Weekly contributor Jim Newsom noted when I brought up the subject last week, Bob Dylan once called Smokey Robinson "America's greatest living poet."

"Tears of a Clown," Newsom adds, "is one of my favorites," and he cites the following verse as evidence:

"Now if I appear to be carefree,

It's only to camouflage my sadness;

In order to shield my pride I try

To cover this hurt with a show of gladness

But don't let my show convince you

That I've been happy since you

Decided to go..."

* * *

All of these lyrics, of course, need their musical accompaniment to fully come to life. But when we read them as text on a page, the experience of listening to the songs becomes immeasurably richer. * -- Tom Robotham, Portfolio Weekly, Hampton Roads, VA (Dec. 5, 2006)

About the Author

Herb Jordan is a legal scholar, composer, and commentator on American culture. He taught at the University of Michigan Law School, where he received the L. Hart Wright Outstanding Faculty Member Award. He is also a recipient of the Thomas M. Cooley Distinguished Brief Award for scholarly legal writing. Jordan composed for Count Basie and has produced a number of award-winning albums, including the Grammy-nominated American Song. He tutors young writers in the Los Angeles public schools.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon (November 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375422005
• ISBN-13: 978-0375422003
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 0.9 x 8.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #758,209 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lyrics That Defined A Generation, April 21, 2007

By 

S. Howard "sammieh" (Orange,N.J) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era (Hardcover)

First of I'm not in the habit of buying books that have no plot or can't teach me anything or at least be entertaining in some way.But now I must admit I'm glad I got this book.This book is all about the lyrics I grew up listening to.On some of these songs I never fully understood the words or I didn't remenber them until I found this book.This book contains some of the best songs that came out of the Motown era.While under the leadership of Berry Gordy Motown put together a group of talented singers,arrangers,producers and songwriters.The lyrics that people like Marvin Gaye,Smokey Robinson,Stevie Wonder and Holland-Dozier-Holland wrote beautiful pomes that go straight to the heart.As you read the lyrics you can hear the music that goes with the song in your head.Taking you back to the sixes.In conclusion as I was reading this book I must admit I was wrong.This book does have a plot in a strange way.The plot of this book is to take us back to an era when songs were true pomes of love.Lyrics that taught us how to express our feelings toward those we love.And those songs found a way to somehow entertain us along the way.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars many memories, December 15, 2006

By 

harryo (michigan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era (Hardcover)

everyone i shared this book with loved it and everyone wants a copy

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Any popular music library and many a public library will find it popular., March 5, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Motown in Love: Lyrics from the Golden Era (Hardcover)

If you're a Motown music fan you must have MOTOWN IN LOVE: it packs in under one cover all the words to all the love songs of Motown's 'golden era', from 'My Girl' and 'I Heard It Through the Grapevine' to 'Bernadette' and 'Let's Get It Own'. Perfect for sing-alongs, MOTOWN IN LOVE gathers classics under one cover and makes it easy for singers to gather a group of like-minded music together. Any popular music library and many a public library will find it popular.