Not Fade Away 1969: I Want You Back, by The Jackson Five

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<time property="dc:issued" datatype="xsd:dateTime" datetime="2013-07-22" content="2013-07-22T10:54:49+01:00" style="margin: 0px;">Monday 22 July 2013
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Not Fade Away 1969: I Want You Back, by The Jackson Five.

The Jackson Five
​

I want to dance again. So put the needle on the record. Listen to the piano trill, follow the clipped funk guitar and wait for that voice to kick in. And then watch me move.

Here’s the thing. I want to speak up for pop in this blog. Part of me actually thought about picking The Archies’ Sugar Sugar in 1969 because it’s so candy sweet, because it’s possibly the first record I really remember from childhood and because I could happily argue against the grain of the sixties notion – derived from the Beatles – that you had to write your own material.

But to be honest I Want You Back allows me to do all of those things and more.

This is my idea of pop. In fact I’d say this may be the greatest pop song ever made. One huge whoop of joy, even if the lyrics are all heartache and heartbreak.

If our idea of the sixties lives on in the ambition and adventure of the Beatles and the darkness and dissolution of the Stones and the Velvet Underground, then it’s also here. Here in this record that wants you to move, this record that reminds you that pop music can make you feel alive and be thrilled by that feeling. This record that reminds you why you – why I – fell in love with music in the first place.

Because it makes you feel good. And possibly no record that I’ve chosen so far – apart maybe from Tutti Frutti – makes me feel as good as this one.

There’s always a danger that we reduce pop to the equivalent of an English Literature exam question. You know the kind of thing: “What is the writer trying to convey in this lyric?” There’s a tendency to perceive seriousness as superior in some way. I’m not sure I believe that, though. The pleasures of pop don’t need any academic endorsement. They never did.

And yes I utterly believe pop can talk about anything. That’s one of its joys. But it can also say nothing and still matter.

The facts about I Want You Back are that Motown signed a group of brothers from Gary, Indiana, that Berry Gordy himself got personally involved in finding the right vehicle for them, and worked with Deke Richards, Fonce Mizel and Freddie Perren who had previously written for Gladys Knight and the Pips. I Want You Back was the result.

And then, of course, an 11-year-old boy stepped up to the microphone.

I could leave it there. At that moment before you hear Michael Jackson for the first time. But that would mean I can’t talk about what he does at the breakdown, the way he goes uh-huh and then screams at the top of his voice “All I want, All I need” and pulls the word go out and out like you’d pull salt water taffy.

Does he understand what he’s singing about? Does he know what “one long sleepless night” might feel like? I doubt it, not then, but it doesn’t matter. He is finding out how he can push and twist and stretch his voice, finding out how to inhabit the song, live in it, shape it to his own ends. It’s a great pop song anyway, but Jackson’s performance makes it better.

When it comes down to it music is sound. We can invest it with meaning and chart its range and depths but it’s still sound. Some sounds grate. Some sounds thrill. This sound thrills. And yes it makes you – makes me - want to dance. Isn’t that the best thing music can do?


Other contenders

I Wanna Be Your Dog, The Stooges
Suspicious Minds, Elvis Presley
Way to Blue, Nick Drake
Gimme Shelter, The Rolling Stones
Space Oddity, David Bowie
Walk On By, Isaac Hayes
Breakfast in Bed, Dusty Springfield

And the best-selling UK single of 1969: Sugar Sugar, The Archies


http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-...-want-you-back-by-the-jackson-five.1374486890

 

[Aniram]

Nice little article.

 

[HIStory]

The thing I like in this article that he acknowledges that not every song has to be super intellectual to be good. Some songs are just meant to be fun and if it's good and makes you feel good it can give you just much of a memorable and cathartic experience as any "serious" song with some deeply intellectual lyrics or something.

Sometimes I feel that there's so much intellectual snobism in some circles that they lose the fun and miss the heart of the music (or other art forms). I liken it a bit to the fact that you rarely see a comedy being awarded Movie of the Year at the Oscars. It always has to be some heavy drama, but rarely, if ever, a comedy. Why is that? Why do we look so down on the fun side? Why do we think that just because something is entertaining it cannot be so good or "deep" as something that is intentionally heavy and "deep".

 

[SoCav]

I like the article too!

The thing I like in this article that he acknowledges that not every song has to be super intellectual to be good. Some songs are just meant to be fun and if it's good and makes you feel good it can give you just much of a memorable and cathartic experience as any "serious" song with some deeply intellectual lyrics or something.

Sometimes I feel that there's so much intellectual snobism in some circles that they lose the fun and miss the heart of the music (or other art forms).

Interesting point. This relates to one of my biggest annoyances about traditional music critics (e.g. those writing for magazines like Rolling Stone). The focus in their writing is often way too much on just the lyrics, in my opinion. For me personally lyrics always come second to the music. I realize that not everyone feels the same way, but it is not uncommon for music journalists to write maybe one short paragraph about the actual music (often in very general terms) and spend the rest of it on the lyrics, or the place of a song or album within culture at large. All interesting stuff, but surely, if you call yourself a music journalist, you should be writing about the actual music as well.

I have often wondered why this is the case. In part I think it is because many music critics have a background in journalism but not in music, so they simply may not have enough knowledge to analyze the music in detail. Another reason might be because many writers developed their interest in music mainly through rock, a genre in which lyrics traditionally are more important than, say, funk (which is not to say that that's how I feel about rock, I think that is shortchanging rock on the musical front). Whatever the origin of it, I think there traditionally has indeed been a bias against music in which lyrics do not play a very prominent role. I think this is something that has also come into play in the way in which Michael, coming from an r&b/soul/funk tradition, has been evaluated. Although Michael has written nice lyrics, I think where he really excels is the feeling with which he sings.

It is a shame that these differing characteristics are evaluated differently, rather than embraced. Why would lyrical complexity necessarily be better than rhythmic or melodic complexity? I think you can find great music in almost every genre.

Anyway, I'd better stop this offtopic banter now. :lol: Thanks for that though respect, your point really got me thinking!

 

[HIStory]

^ Yes, I agree completely. That's why I'm so excited about Susan Fast's upcoming book about Dangerous. She seems to be someone who gets it. Like she said in that interview:

Name a lyric from the album you&#8217;re writing about that encapsulates either a) the album itself, b) your experience in hearing the album for the first time, or c) your experience writing about the album, so far.

SF: It wasn&#8217;t the lyrics that captivated me; it rarely is! I&#8217;m drawn to the sound: to grooves, melodies, the quality of the voice, interesting harmonic shifts, instrument choices, production values, how the music makes us experience time and our bodies. What&#8217;s intoxicating to me about Michael Jackson&#8217;s music is, well, the music. Especially its intensity; and while the level of intensity is always up there with Jackson, I would argue it reaches new heights in Dangerous. This record is so just so emotionally bloody.

I&#8217;ve spent my entire career trying to figure out how to write productively about musical sound, in a way that doesn&#8217;t just point out musical structure or other details for the sake of it, in a language that none but a few specialists understand, but in a way that connects the sound of the music to significant cultural ideas. If the primary meanings of music came through the lyrics, why would we need the music? Musical sound carries cultural meaning. So it&#8217;s interesting to me that this image of adulthood we get from Jackson on Dangerous is linked with such emotional intensity, in his voice (which is often at a breaking point), in the tightness of the grooves, or in the downright baroque excessiveness of the music. Much of this intensity is associated with disillusionment at the world, with feeling abandoned, or betrayed. Or angry. &#8220;Black or White,&#8221; for example, isn&#8217;t just a cute ditty about racial harmony when you start to dig beneath the surface. Dude is quite pissed off! And I suppose if I had to commit to one thing that encapsulates the album, it might be the dance at the end of the short film for &#8220;Black or White.&#8221; I know this gets away from the music, but the intense and shifting emotional landscape of that dance sums up in movement what the album delivers in sound.

I agree with her completely: if the lyrics are primary then why would we even need the music? There are some great lyricists in popular music but none of them are as great as the best poets. So if I want great poetry I read poems. Music needs to offer something different than that. Some music is stronger in terms of lyrics (like Boby Dylan, for example), some is stronger in terms of music. Nothing wrong with either approach - they just have different focus and different means and different purposes and artists with different talents. Michael has some good lyrics, but he was never famous for the highly intellectual poetry of his lyrics. Nor should he be. He had different strenghts. His lyrics tend to be rather simple (though sometimes mysterious). But for the fact he was able to convey so much emotion through his vocals and music. That's what made his music exciting and cathartic, not necessarily the lyrics. That's what music should do - it should have soul, excitement, it should move something in people. Whether it mainly achieves a cathartic experience through great lyrics or great music - nothing is superior way to the other, just different.

I think most of those music magazines are written by white rock fans and that in itself gives a bias to those magazines and a certain mindset where black tradition isn't valued or even understood that much. And especially not felt. That's how they are able to commit such ridiculous things as crowning Justin Timberlake the saviour of R&B (or even the new King of Pop a few years ago).