Five Motown songs that shaped rock and roll
Rock and roll and soul music have never been that far apart. Both genres got their start in blues music, and whether or not some snob thinks that one genre is cooler than the other, it’s always about making the kind of music that hits someone in the heart before anything else. So, while many people look to a movement like the British invasion as the moment when everything changed for rock and roll, Motown had already been shaping what music could do on the charts for years.
There were always bound to be artists who were willing to go down different avenues for their material, but Motown wasn’t considered a ‘hit factory’ by accident. While many people had the same songwriters writing their tunes, everything that landed on the hit parade was another look into what pop music could sound like, be it a syrupy ballad with lush string arrangements or the kind of funky jam that left audiences with their mouths on the floor.
Although a lot of what they played came back to blues, there was a growing sense of musicality to it as well. Many Motown arrangements had many moving parts, but with someone like James Jamerson in the background of some of the biggest hits from the time, most rockers became inspired to play different scales or learn more complex pieces of music theory to get where they needed to go.
While there’s also a fair bit of lightweight fluff in Motown’s back pages, these five songs are proof that even the greatest elements of soul music could change the way that rock and roll is perceived. Everything might circle back to the blues, but if the rockers had kept answering only to Chuck Berry, we would never have been able to dream of anything better than the sweet sounds of R&B.
Five Motown songs that shaped rock music:
‘You Really Got a Hold On Me’ – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
Every rock and roll band is only as good as their ballads. As much as the uptempo numbers got the kids dancing, it was only a matter of time before someone could take their music into new places once they had the right slow jam. And while The Miracles were never anything less than sincere, Smokey Robinson had the template for the rock and roll ballad with ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’.
Aside from being one of the most bittersweet love songs of all time, Robinson’s tale of co-dependency is the kind of tune that all rockers took for themselves, whether that be The Beatles copying them wholesale or other artists taking the same theme of being in a busted relationship and not knowing where to go. Love songs might make the world go round, but every seasoned songwriter knows that heartache makes for a much better story whenever you get onstage.
‘I Want You Back’ – Jackson 5
The most important lesson any band can learn is knowing their place in the mix. As much as people like the idea of showboating whenever they get onstage, there are only so many times that can happen on the stage before people start questioning what the hell you’re even doing. But the art of being tastefully musical is a lost art, and when listening to old Jackson 5 albums, tunes like ‘I Want You Back’ were the real test of what someone could do when hanging in the back.
There was no debate that everyone came to see Michael Jackson sing his lungs out, but the sense of groove Wilton Felder creates with his bassline is as much of a hook as Jacko’s vocals. Outside of the pure euphoria of hearing the band cutting loose, the best part of the song is getting into that groove, usually having that syncopated feeling that never quite lands on the beat but never stops being funky. The Jackson 5 may have been one of the cornerstones of the label for their singing, but any rockstar would have been listening out for how to make that groove their own.
‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’ – Temptations
Not every song Motown released was meant to be a massive hit. Sometimes, a song needs to ride itself out the right way, and if it doesn’t happen to come out in the usual three-minute format, everyone will have to deal with that. The Temptations already had enough hits to go around by the 1970s, though, and hearing them incorporate some rock textures into their sound when making ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’ was the best of both worlds in many respects.
Although the song itself was cut down for the single edit to a breezy six minutes, the studio version went on for over 12 minutes. While there’s no massive solo that will go down in the history books here, the foundation of the song was about taking the appeal of one riff and making it last for as long as it felt good to play. That’s not always the most radio-friendly approach, but you can bet that every single jam band that came afterwards was paying attention to how they were playing off each other.
‘Sir Duke’ – Stevie Wonder
The word ‘genius’ tends to get thrown around far too often in the world of popular music. Even though some people have a knack for writing brilliant choruses is one thing, but the true artists in their field know how to take their craft and incorporate every genre under the sun into their music. And for someone who was looking to dig deeper into what rock and roll could sound like, ‘Sir Duke’ was a musical history lesson wrapped up in one of the greatest songs of the 1970s.
Although Stevie Wonder already proved himself as one of the leaders of Motown during his time there, hearing him take weird bits of harmony and stitch them together on this tune is a stroke of brilliance, from the different jazzy chords of the pre-chorus to the wild left turn in the chorus when he has a chord that is nowhere near the key of the song added and somehow makes it work regardless. Soul music was always known for being played by musicians who did their homework, and if a song like ‘Sir Duke’ could reach the charts, who’s to say that Steely Dan or Mahavishnu Orchestra couldn’t as well?
‘What’s Going On’ – Marvin Gaye
By the end of the 1960s, the music world had become much darker than it used to be. ‘The Summer of Love’ might have been in full effect, but it was all in service to the carnage going on half a world away in Vietnam. People were being sent home in bodybags, and the level of peace and love in the world seemed to be dwindling, but if The Beatles reminded us that love was all we needed, Marvin Gaye reminded everyone that the best way of protesting is to confront what was happening at home.
Although Curtis Mayfield also had a penchant for writing perfect critiques of social unrest, ‘What’s Going On’ states Gaye’s problems as plainly as possible, knowing that he wouldn’t have been able to get his point across if he had continued to call out specific politicians bringing everyone down. While ‘Inner City Blues’ is definitely a sharper way of criticising the problems with the world, ‘What’s Going On’ is where some rockers started to get the big picture a bit more. They were social messengers as much as they were performers, and they needed to use their voices for the right reasons.
