Anthology

Four Tops, The

album cover

The Tops of the Tops

According to one axiom of the middle 1960s, if you listened to the radio long enough, sooner or later a Four Tops song would come on. Since the dawn of satellite radio in 2001, that wait time has been significantly reduced. On an average summer Saturday in 2005, the great pleading Tops single "Bernadette" appeared at least three times within six hours on Sirius—in the music mix of a classic soul channel, an interview with rocker Graham Parker on an alt-rock station, and during Kid Leo's show on the Underground Garage.

That says plenty about the Tops, the most exuberant of Motown hit-makers. The Detroit quartet—which retained the same personnel for four decades—made drop-dead incredible singles, and totally under-whelming filler-filled albums. The rousing and galvanic "Same Old Song," "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)," and "Bernadette" can't be labeled "soul" or "pop" or "rock"—they're an amalgamation of all that and more, set to hot-rodding four-on-the-floor rhythm. Key to the enterprise is singer Levi Stubbs, whose urgent declarations have inspired critical rhapsodies, and at least one great song of homage, Billy Bragg's "Levi Stubbs' Tears."

Recalling the Four Tops' heyday, songwriter Brian Holland—part of the Holland/Dozier/Holland team responsible for many Four Tops hits—said that after "I Can't Help Myself" was finished in 1965, he and a girlfriend listened to a test pressing of the song "three to four hundred times" in the course of a week-end. That's one amazing thing about the Tops: You can hear the same old song over and over again, and never get tired of it.

Genre: R&B
Released: 2004, Motown
Key Tracks: "Same Old Song," "Bernadette."
Next Stop: The Supremes: Anthology
After That: Isley Brothers: 3+3
Book Page: 287

Buy this Recording

Share this page:

Comments:

Post a Comment:

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below:


Note that your comment will be reviewed by an editor before it appears on the site.


About 1,000 Recordings

Celebrate the joy, the revelation, the mystery, the fun, the sheer shivers-up-the-spine pleasure of great music.

Essential operas. Milestone rock albums. An education in the blues. The world of world. Classical from Bach to Bartók to Beethoven to Brahms. And dozens of unexpected gems, surprising discoveries, and long-lost masterpieces.

This is an online version of the list (published alphabetically in the book). The entries in the book break down genre bias and broaden every listener’s horizons—think Miles Davis to Claude Debussy to the melodic story-songs of The Decemberists. And the writing is passionate, informed, opinionated.

More about the book

site design: Juxtaprose