‘I Hear A Symphony’: Diana Ross’ greatest song, according to Berry Gordy
It’s often the orbit of rock and psychedelia that soundtracked the Woodstock generation that’s often dubbed the decade’s most essential musical offering in US cultural history, a moment when fierce political challenge and countercultural radicalism found a happy presence on the Billboard 200.
Scoring just as vital a songbook to the era’s troubled social shifts was the Black soul pumped out of Detroit’s Motown label and their Memphis counterpart Stax Records, the former boasting 79 Hot 100 top-tens across their classic output, from romantic pop numbers to fired-up excoriations of burning racial injustice.
Formed in 1959, former boxer turned music entrepreneur Berry Gordy turned to songwriting after a brief spell running a jazz record store and working at the city’s Ford Motor Company assembly line. Gordy would swiftly find himself discovering and nurturing some of the day’s biggest stars, Marvin Gaye, The Miracles, Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson and The Temptations, all soul royalty that formed core additions to Motown’s rich label.
Giving the entire roster a run for their money was Diana Ross. Serving as The Supremes’ key voice, a dizzying plethora of hits across the 1960s would ensure pop royalty for the ‘Motown Queen’, monster smashes like ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’, ‘You Keep Me Hangin’ On’, and ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ would endure as the Detroit label’s core canon of numbers.
Yet, the steady run of number ones took a brief hit when ‘Nothing but Heartaches’ only made 11. Expecting nothing less than the best for his artists, Gordy instructed the Holland–Dozier–Holland songwriting team to pen a surefire hit, pronto.
The result was 1965’s ‘I Hear a Symphony’ leading the namesake album the following year. It would stand as a Supremes classic, and grant that much-desired number one the team had been grabbing for. Years later, Gordy would guest on BBC Radio 4’s long-running Desert Island Discs programme in 2016 and selected The Supremes’ wistful ballad as his ‘Castaway’s Favourite’. “When I hear ‘Symphony’, when I think about her, it was kind of our song, together,” he confessed. “Whenever she would sing it, it was like she would be singing it to me”.
Gordy would enter a relationship with Ross during this time, a likely sentimental factor when highlighting ‘I Hear a Symphony’ as his most-loved single. “It’s extremely special to me because Diana Ross and I had this wonderful relationship that turned into a great love relationship, but I was more intense and interested in making her the biggest star in the world,” he stated. “Managing her and developing her career was the greatest joy that I had”.
Ross would remain with Motown across her classic solo output, 1980’s disco-inspired Diana launching the mammoth ‘Upside Down’ and ‘I’m Coming Out‘ as some of the label’s late commercial spurts. Following a $20million offer from RCA, Ross finally jumped ship in 1981 and parted ways with Motown after 20 years of hitmaking. Gordy never held grudges, remaining a fan long after their creative and romantic relationship had ended: “Diana was very special. She and I just are the greatest friends, as are all Motown acts that I dealt with”.
