Within Universal, Motown was incorporated into various other subsidiaries including Universal Motown Records Group from 2000 to 2011 and later moved to Island Def Jam Music Group until both label groups were disbanded by UMG in 2014.

Legend has it that when the first experimental batch of MDMA powder turned up on the streets of Detroit in the cold early months of 1971, one of the first curious recipients was Temptations producer Norman Whitfield. If 1972’s Talking Book saw Stevie Wonder merely hinting at the socio-political unrest of early-’70s America, then the following year’s Innervisions faced the darkness head on. Next came the expansive, biographical, slow ghetto groove of Papa Was A Rollin’ Stone but before that the group lost their sweet heartbreak vocal sound when Eddie Kendricks went solo, and on August 17, 1973 the deeply troubled Paul Williams was found in a deserted parking lot near Hitsville USA, dead from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. The promise of Gaye’s sophisticated loving is all in his voice, coarser than the crystalline angeltone he employed on What’s Going On, but no less exquisite, and similarly augmented by a crosstalk of Marvindubs and brilliantly inventive backing vox (the impressionistic, dove-like coos from 3:50 in Let’s Get It On are astonishing).

There was no ‘punk’ as any MOJO reader might recognise the term in James’s hybrid, which was actually funk-rock-pop; while his image was more Hollywood Pimp. When “The Artistry Of Brenda Holloway” album was first released in the UK in 1968, I always wished that the rest of the world could have been able to enjoy it as well. Before it, Do The Boomerang, the title track and Road Runner have all shuddered the foundations, while after it Shoot Your Shot barely takes time for breath.

My Girl Has Gone, the fourth US hit single, follows with its dramatic crashes of orchestration on each chorus, contrastingly sharply with each gentler, more ruminative verse. Since we began our programme of Motown releases, the Fantastic Four has been among the most requested acts we’ve been asked to feature. But for all the talk of daily danger and strife, his burning spiritual optimism, first crystallized on 1972’s Music Of My Mind, still thrives. But you can’t have one without the other, and for every sceptic of Talking Book’s Marmite opener, You Are The Sunshine Of My Life, there are a thousand suckers for its uninhibited whistleability and emotional boldness. Lovers of Detroit soul have long rhapsodised about the Fantastic Four, one of the Motor City’s most admired vocal groups of the 60s and 70s.In January 2023 under Chivon Dean's new leadership as president and CEO, Motown has been divested from the Capitol Music Group while remaining under the Universal Music Group. The “Artistry” album was issued in mono and stereo, but the stereo version is much rarer today, so we have decided to go with that for our CD reissue, with one exception. The group did come very close to having an album release on Motown’s Soul imprint – to the point where a master tape was sent to the pressing plant before the plug was pulled. Unfortunately for the Fantastic Four, it would not be until they moved to Westbound Records that they were able to rekindle the chart flame that had burned through their Ric Tic years.

Profane though such thinking might be, What’s Going On is the kind of album to make you imagine parallels between its narrator and Christ: both driven to spread a message of brotherhood and suffering for the sins of the world, only for their Fathers to have other plans. The latter is another staging post on Wonder’s political journey, a deceptively honeyed assault on the self-serving representatives of a white American status quo who “killed all our leaders” but will bring themselves down through their own iniquity.Spearheaded by the certain power and wonderful expressiveness of the quartet’s lead singer, the great Levi Stubbs, and steered by the songs of Holland-Dozier-Holland, Reach Out was their fourth studio album, and is awash with hits – Reach Out I’ll Be There, 7 Rooms Of Gloom, I’ll Turn To Stone, Standing In The Shadows Of Love and Bernadette (all written and produced by H-D-H) plus their atmospheric cover of The Left Banke’s Walk Away Renee, and though they’re less at home with Monkees hand-me-downs Last Train To Clarksville and I’m A Believer (one can hear, if not condescension, then a certain lack of engagement with the lyrics) they’re much more comfortable with Tim Hardin’s If I Were A Carpenter. Language - Regardless of country of origin all tracks are sung in English, unless otherwise stated in our description. The first album released in 1975, was a top 10 hit in the UK, where it charted for 35 weeks, whilst Vol.