The Motown Top 250 Countdown (#210-206) & This Week's Statistics

Hello, my friends, old and new! The weekend is almost gone, which means that our countdown and our statistics are overdue: Let's not waste any more time!

At #210 we find The Jackson 5 and their #1 hit (US Pop & US R&B) The Love You Save. When Berry Gordy signed the Jackson 5 to Motown, his intention was for the group to open with three Number One singles. Following I Want You Back and ABC, The Love You Save completed the feat in less than a year - and Gordy's songwriting team, the Corporation, didn't even have to change the formula. Said the Corporation's Deke Richards, "The only difference was we just had to come up with a new punch and groove for the beginning and a new, different structure for the verse." Explained his teammate Fred Perren, "There was a little play between Jermaine and Michael, we always tried to get that in there. We had a little list of things, a checklist."

A fourth #1 would follow (I'll Be There), as well as two #2 hits, making The Jackson 5 the most successful act of the early 70s. Billboard ranked The Love You Save as the #16 song of 1970, one slot behind the Jackson 5's ABC. The opening exclamation, "Stop!", and the foot stomps that complement the rhythm during the latter part of the song are allusions to the 1965 number-one Motown single by The Supremes, Stop! In the Name of Love. The Jackson 5 essentially replaced The Supremes as Motown's main focus in the early 1970s.

The Love You Save features side vocals of Jermaine Jackson singing alongside Michael in the final "Stop! The love you save may be your own", beside Marlon, Tito, and Jackie. The song's lyrics feature Michael and Jermaine warning a "fast" girl to slow down and "stop!", because "the love you save may be your own!" It was written and produced by The Corporation (Berry Gordy, Alphonzo Mizell, Freddie Perren and Deke Richards.) Here it is:

At #209, My Mistake (Was to Love You) is a song recorded as a duet by Diana Ross and Marvin Gaye which was the second single released off the singers' duet album Diana & Marvin in February 1974. One of the original songs featured on that album, My Mistake (Was to Love You) was written by Gloria Jones and Pam Sawyer, the team responsible for the Gladys Knight & the Pips' classic If I Were Your Woman. Pam Sawyer was also the co-writer (with Michael Masser) of the Diana Ross hit Last Time I Saw Him which dropped out of the Top 40 just prior to the Top 40 debut of My Mistake (Was to Love You) in March 1974: Sawyer would subsequently co-write (with Marilyn Mcleod) Diana Ross' 1976 #1 hit Love Hangover. The narrative of My Mistake (Was to Love You) outlines how two lovers' relationship fell apart because the man, according to the woman, felt as if "a girl loves you, you only call them weak", while the man admits that he let his lover "slip through, like grains of sand". The song peaked at #15 on the Billboard R&B singles chart and #19 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here it is:

At #208 is Stevie Wonder and Yester-Me, Yester-You, Yesterday, a 1969 soul song written by Ron Miller and Bryan Wells. The song continued Wonder's success on the pop charts. It reached #7 on the US pop chart (#5 R&B) and become Wonder's ninth Top 10 single of the 1960s. The single fared even better on the UK chart where it reached #2 in November 1969, and at that time, it was Wonder's biggest UK hit. It also made the top 10 in Ireland, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Canada, and #11 in Australia.

At the time the song was released, Wonder was going through some vocal problems and was required to wait before recording a song. Due to this, instead of making Wonder record new ones, it was decided to release songs that he had recorded years earlier, and this song was one of them (it was recorded 2 years earlier):

The song had been first recorded, in 1966, by blue-eyed Motown soul singer Chris Clark:

The song was later reworked into an unusual, electronic version by Jennifer Rush on her 1985 Movin' album:

At #207 are The Temptations with Runaway Child, Running Wild, a 1969 hit single produced by Norman Whitfield and written by Whitfield and Barrett Strong. The single was the second of their psychedelic soul phase and it featured all five Temptations - Dennis Edwards, Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams, Melvin Franklin, and Otis Williams - trading verses and harmony lines. Runaway Child, Running Wild paints a tale of a young boy (presumably a preteen) who runs away from home after being punished for playing hooky. The boy wanders the dark streets alone, eventually realizing he cannot survive on his own, but cannot find his way home, and ends up lost, frightened by strangers, unfamiliar landmarks, and his own thoughts. "Runaway child runnin' wild," the Temptations tell the boy during the chorus, "you better go back home/where you belong".

The Temptations alternately express and depict his fears, with the tension of the record building to a climax over the first five minutes of the record. At this point, the vocals fade out, and the record briefly gives voice to its young protagonist, who cries desperately for his mother before fading into the mix. Runaway Child then segues into an extended instrumental passage, during which Earl Van Dyke's organ, Joe Messina's electric guitar, and Dennis Coffey's distorted wah-wah pedal guitar take center stage for four minutes. After the instrumental builds the song up to a second climax, the track is stripped to a bassline and repeating hi-hat figure, and The Temptations return to the mix to issue one final admonition to the runaway: "Listen to your heart beat/it's beating much too fast/go back home/where you belong".

The single version of Runaway Child only features the first five minutes of the song, fading out before the instrumental section begins. It was a big US hit (#1 R&B, #6 Pop). This is the longer, album version:

Here are The Temptations performing a shortened version on TV:

Earl Van Dyke, who performs the prominent organ solo during the instrumental section of The Temptations' track, recorded his own instrumental version of Runaway Child, Running Wild, which was released as a single the same year:

Finally for today, at #206, it's Diana Ross with Remember Me. Written and produced by the husband-and-wife songwriting-production team and recording duo of Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, the 1970 single was a top 10 hit in the UK and Canada. In the US it peaked at #10 (R&B) and #16 (Hot 100):

This is a TV performance:

British singer Kim Wilde recorded a disco version of the song for her 2011 album, Snapshots:

Now, let's continue with last week's statistics; I will give you the usual weekly and all-time lists, but, before that, here's our countdown of the top 20 cities with the most visits in the last two years. If you don't see your own city in the top 20, feel free to ask about its placing in the comments' section, I'll be happy to give you the exact position of your city. Let's continue with positions #10-#06.

At #11 there was Houston and at #10 we find another Texan city, Dallas, the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, which is the fourth most populous metropolitan area in the United States. The city's population ranks ninth in the US and third in Texas after Houston and San Antonio.

Dallas is one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States and the largest inland metropolitan area in the United States that lacks any navigable link to the sea. For the rest of the world, Dallas became a household word with the very popular TV show that ran from 1978 until 1991. This is its theme:

The song that I'm dedicating to our friends from Dallas is simply called Dallas and it's by The Flatlanders. There may be no more iconic image of the city than when Jimmie Dale Gilmore sings, "Did you ever see Dallas from a DC9 at night?" Much like the history of the song itself, which was a complete flop upon its release in 1972 before going on to be considered a classic, that image is fraught with contradictions: Dallas is a gem, but it's also cruel and garish, a "woman who'll walk on you when you're down" or "a rich man with a death wish in his eye." Which is just the thing: When you love it and even when you hate it, you have to admit it's a hell of a city. Here is the song:

At #9 is yet another city from the United States, the capital of the country itself: Washington, D.C.Founded after the American Revolution as the seat of government of the newly independent country, Washington was named after George Washington, first President of the United States and Founding Father. The Washington metropolitan area, of which the District is the principal city, has a population of over 6 million, the sixth-largest metropolitan statistical area in the country.

The city contains dozens of important landmarks, the most prominent of which are the White House, the United States Capitol, the United States Supreme Court Building, the Smithsonian, the Library Of Congress, and many others.

The song that I dedicate to our D.C. friends is by Washington, D.C., native Tarica June, who tackles her city's skyrocketing gentrification on the cool track But Anyway. But Anyway is built on samples of songs by Eric B. and Rakim, P.M. Dawn and Suzanne Vega. This is it:

The city at #8 is also in the United States: Atlanta is the capital and most populous city of the US state of Georgia. It is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, home to 5.8 million people and the ninth-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Atlanta was founded as a transportation hub at the intersection of two railroad lines in 1837. After being mostly burned to the ground during the American Civil War, the city rose from its ashes to become a national center of commerce and the unofficial capital of the "New South". The burning of Atlanta was one of the key scenes in the most celebrated movie of Classic Hollywood, Gone With The Wind. This is the scene:

The song that I dedicate to our friends in Atlanta is one that I especially like: it's called Imaginary Lover and it was a big US hit in the late 1970s for Atlanta Rhythm Section. Here it is:

The only non-American city in today's list is the city at #7 and it's the beautiful city of Paris, in France. After Athens, the city in which I'm living in for many years (which is in the top 5) Paris is the city out of the top 20 that I know best. I've been there dozens of times, not as a tourist, but as a guest of people who actually lived there and had known the city intimately. If it weren't for my mediocre knowledge of the French language, I would feel absolutely at home there. And the food!...

The name "Paris" is derived from its early inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe, who inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. By the end of the Western Roman Empire, the town was known as Parisius, a Latin name that would later become Paris in French. Christianity was introduced in the middle of the 3rd century AD by Saint Denis, the first Bishop of Paris: according to legend, when he refused to renounce his faith before the Roman occupiers, he was beheaded on the hill which became known as Mons Martyrum (Latin "Hill of Martyrs"), later "Montmartre", from where he walked headless to the north of the city; the place where he fell and was buried became an important religious shrine, the Basilica of Saint-Denis, and many French kings are buried there.

Clovis the Frank, the first king of the Merovingian dynasty, made the city his capital from 508. As the Frankish domination of Gaul began, there was a gradual immigration by the Franks to Paris and the Parisian Francien dialects were born. By the end of the 12th century, Paris had become the political, economic, religious, and cultural capital of France.

Paris is often referred to as The City of Light (La Ville Lumière), both because of its leading role during the Age of Enlightenment, and more literally because Paris was one of the first European cities to adopt gas street lighting. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of Europe's major centers of finance, commerce, fashion, science, music, and painting. In 2013–2014, the Paris Region had the third-highest GDP in the world and the largest regional GDP in the EU.

The song that I dedicate to our friends in Paris is a timeless song that I love, by an artist who's emblematic of this city. It's Juliette Gréco with the 1951 song, Sous le Ciel de Paris:

Finally, for today, we go to the United States once more for the city at #6, which is Boston, the capital of Massachusetts, as well as the most populous city in the New England region. The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest such area in the country.

Boston is one of the oldest cities in the United States, founded on the Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by Puritan settlers from England. It was the scene of several key events of the American Revolution, such as the Boston Massacre, the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and the Siege of Boston. Upon US independence from Great Britain, it continued to be an important port and manufacturing hub as well as a center for education and culture. The city has expanded beyond the original peninsula through land reclamation and municipal annexation.

The Boston area's many colleges and universities make it an international center of higher education, including law, medicine, engineering, and business, and the city is considered to be a world leader in innovation and entrepreneurship, with nearly 2,000 startups. The city has one of the highest costs of living in the United States as it has undergone gentrification, though it remains high on world livability rankings.

On this occasion, there were many songs that I could choose from: The song that I finally chose to dedicate to our friends in Boston is a lovely hit from the mid-1970s, Please Come to Boston by Dave Loggins. This is it:

Here are this week's Top 10 countries:

1. the United States

2. Greece

3. the United Kingdom

4. Canada

5. Australia

6. Germany

7. France

8. Brazil

9. Russia

10. Italy

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence since our last statistics (alphabetically): Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Austria, the Bahamas, Bangladesh, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, FYR Of Macedonia, Ghana, Grenada, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar (Burma), Namibia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, the Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Sint Maarten, Slovakia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad & Tobago, Turkey, Uganda, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Uruguay, Venezuela, Vietnam, and Zambia. Happy to have you all!

And here's the all-time Top 10:

1. the United States = 30.0%

2. France = 21.3%

3. the United Kingdom = 12.6%

4. Greece = 7.0%

5. Russia = 2.4%

6. Germany = 1.8%

7. Canada = 1.7%

8. Italy = 1.2%

9. Turkey = 0.89%

10. Cyprus = 0.81%

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!