What was the first Motown song to sell over five million copies?
Although it is technically a label as well as a genre, Motown was actually an empire that gave pop music a stark glow-up during what is still considered one of the most vibrant eras of mainstream music.
Although the imprint is alive and well even today, its initial run gave some of the all-time greats their start and cemented their place in history. Its extensive roster of Black artists left a deeply segregated United States with no option but to finally embrace those who had been sidelined and simultaneously exploited for decades.
While pioneers of the blues and rock ’n’ roll were never properly credited for their contributions, Motown provided a platform for those at the receiving end of America’s racist social structure to share their art and be compensated for it.
Chart-friendly commercial music all looked and sounded the same until the 1960s, and it was only when Berry Gordy Jr set the Motown Record Corporation properly in motion that the music circuit in the US began operating at its full potential. The Supremes, The Temptations, The Four Tops and The Miracles are just a few of the blockbuster names that emerged from the label, forming what would be branded a “superteam” today.
The Motown cohort was relentlessly landing one hit after another in their heyday, dominating the charts and airwaves across the United States and beyond. Alongside the city’s booming automotive industry, this made Detroit an economic and cultural hotspot for almost two decades straight.
Although the imprint had endless wins in the mainstream circuit, one of the first massive victories it enjoyed was having a single surpass five million units in sales. In the streaming age, this perhaps doesn’t seem like too significant a milestone, given we now have access to pretty much all the music ever released for the market price of one hard-copy album.
During the 1960s, however, five million sales meant five million individual purchases, which for a single person was an even bigger deal.
So, who was the first?
While Marvin Gaye reached unprecedented heights with ‘I Heard It Through the Grapevine’ in 1968, generating four million in sales upon release, it wasn’t until two years later that a single crossed the five million mark.
In 1970, The Jackson 5 released what would become the most successful single of Motown’s Detroit years in the form of ‘I’ll Be There’. Amassing 4.2 million units in the United States alone, the single’s global sales resulted in a total of 6.1 million copies sold. A win not only for the group but also the label, this tune alone was symbolic of an irreversible culture shift that persists to this very day in different shapes and forms.
The Jackson 5’s split from Motown might’ve been a bit messy, but there’s no denying their legacy is forever tied to the label. Just take ‘I’ll Be There’, their fourth number-one in a row. No other Black group had managed that before, and it shot them out of any box they’d been put in. At that point, they weren’t just a popular act, they were right up there with the biggest names in the world. The track landed on Third Album, which ended up topping the US R&B charts too, cementing its place as one of the standout records from Motown’s golden age.
