Hitsville USA: Who wrote the most Motown hits?
Hit singles are the bread and butter of the music industry, the be-all-end-all, as far as most major record companies are concerned. Today, the idea of a tiny independent label duking it out with the big three major music companies on the battlefield of the singles chart would be surprising, but back in the 1960s, it would have been virtually unheard of. Nevertheless, Berry Gordy Jr managed to grow Motown Records from a small independent label to a musical empire, commanding countless chart hits and launching a plethora of iconic stars.
Soul music always had the potential to infect the globe with its infectious rhythm and unwavering spirit, but it took labels like Motown to take that sound from the streets of Detroit and expose it to mainstream audiences across the globe. During the early days, Gordy was determined to have the soul stars of Detroit heard by audiences, but he was also a businessman at heart, setting his sights on the commercial success of hit singles.
Gordy always seemed to have an innate ability to spot a hit single, and Motown’s Hitsville USA studio certainly produced its fair share of chart successes. It was Barrett Strong’s 1959 single ‘Money (That’s What I Want)’ which gave Motown – then operating under the name Tamla Records – its first taste of chart success when it reached 23 in the US singles chart in the summer of 1960. That first hit was penned by Berry Gordy himself, alongside songwriter Janie Bradford, and the pair would continue to write songs for the label.
A year after the success of ‘Money’, Motown achieved their first-ever number-one single with The Marvelettes’ ‘Please Mr. Postman’ – a song which, like ‘Money’, went on to be covered by The Beatles. That pioneering number-one was initially penned by vocalist Georgia Dobbins and her friend, William Garrett. However, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland, and Robert Bateman were also listed as songwriters for the song due to the various reworks it required before it was released by Motown.
Out of that team of songwriters, many went on to have lucrative careers as songwriters at Motown, but Brian Holland certainly stands out the most. Following on from his success on ‘Please Mr Postman’, Holland formed the infallible songwriting trio Holland-Dozier-Holland alongside his brother, Eddie Holland, and Lamont Dozier. Together, this group penned a vast array of hit singles for Motown Records, including the vast majority of hits by Diana Ross and The Supremes, as well as other notable classics like The Four Tops’ ‘Reach Out (I’ll Be There)’.
So, who wrote the most Motown hit singles?
Ultimately, it is Smokey Robinson who takes the crown as Motown’s most productive hit writer, having written or co-written a total of 79 hit singles for the label, including three number-one singles. Robinson had been on board the label since its very early days and earned Motown a great deal of success with his group, The Miracles, in addition to writing songs for various other artists. As such, he stayed with the label a lot longer than many of his contemporaries.
Right behind Robinson in the list of Motown’s greatest songwriters is Eddie Holland, who recorded various hits like ‘Jamie’ during the early days of the label before succumbing to stage fright and forming the Holland-Dozier-Holland trio. Eddie Holland wrote or co-wrote 78 hits for Motown, including 12 number-ones.
Comparatively, Brian Holland was responsible for 73 hits, and Lamont Dozier boasted 71. By far their most successful track, collectively, was The Supremes’ defining single ‘Baby Love’, credited with exposing the Motown sound to global audiences in 1964.
