How many number one hits did Motown produce?
Motown is, without doubt, one of the most powerful and successful record companies in the history of modern music. Berry Gordy Jr founded the hit-making machine–then called Tamla Records – back in 1959 in Detroit but has since gone on to churn out some of the biggest and best soul singers the world has ever seen.
Motown has also proved pivotal in the functioning of society as a whole. Testament to the power of its music, it played a pioneering role in desegregating race in America as its Black artists broke into the mainstream and gained widespread acclaim, creating both civil change and chart history.
Speaking of charts, this is the area in which we can study the Motown sensation most tangibly through its mountainous list of smash hits. In the space of just under its first 30 years – 1959 to 1988 – Motown had clocked up an incomparable 53 chart toppers, with standout names such as the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Diana Ross, and Lionel Ritchie having most shots leading the pack.
Of course, 53 singles are too many and massive to succinctly summarise, but we’ll give the headlines our best go. Motown’s first taste at the top came three years after its conception in the form of The Marvelettes in 1961, with their single ‘Please Mr Postman’. Not only was this the label’s first hit, but it was also the only single to have reached number one by an all-female vocal group at the time. The Marvelettes’ success throughout the rest of the 1960s was varied, and they never did reach that coveted pole position again, but it earned them a place in the Motown Hall of Fame.
Jumping all the way to 1985, Motown’s 53rd chart topper across its track record was Lionel Ritchie’s ‘Say You, Say Me’, hitting number one in the week before Christmas that year. The single came from Ritchie’s seminal Dancing on the Ceiling album but was actually written as the title track for the film White Nights. It stayed atop the chart for two weeks; however, if you thought that was impressive, in South Africa, it didn’t budge from first place for some 30 weeks, thus going a long way in explaining its success in winning both an Oscar and a Golden Globe the following year. ‘Say You, Say Me’ was just one in a line of hits for Ritchie, with four other top scorers feeding into Motown’s book of number ones over the years.
Other notable moments naturally include Stevie Wonder, with eight chart-toppers on the label to his name, not least ‘Fingertips’, which made him the youngest artist to achieve the feat, aged just 13. Then you get to Diana Ross and the Supremes, who cumulatively, with both solo and band efforts, lead the way with a seismic 18 number ones between them.
Michael Jackson – in his time there – along with the Jackson 5 clock in with six, subsequently rounding off a dizzying list of Motown’s most exponential exports. Anyone foolish enough to downplay the impact of this one record label on the entire music scene could do themselves a favour looking over these statistics, because there’s absolutely no denying that Motown redefined music, but also history at large, forever.
