50 years ago: The Supremes “You Can’t Hurry Love” hit #1

You Can’t Hurry Love The Supremes

Writer(s): Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, Eddie Holland (see lyrics here) Released: July 25, 1966 First Charted: August 5, 1966 Peak: 12 US, 11 CB, 11 GR, 12 HR, 12 RB, 3 UK, 3 CN, 6 AU, 1 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 1.0 US, 0.6 UK Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 5.0 radio, 10.0 video, 366.54 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: “You Can’t Hurry Love” was the seventh chart-topper from the Supremes. Like its predecessors, it was written by the Motown songwriting and production trio of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Billboard magazine described it as “the group’s most exciting side to date.” WK “Every one of the Supremes’ hits had a big beat working for it, a four-four engine driven by handclaps and bass-drum hits. But none of the hits leading up to ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ had a beat quite that big.” SG “That beat is the focal point, even more than the vocals. Diana Ross and her fellow Supremes flit around that bassline like hummingbirds.” SG Lamont Dozier, one of the songwriters, said “It was basically a gospel feel we were after.” FB To that end, they were inspired by the ‘50s gospel song “You Can’t Hurry God, He’s Right on Time” by Dorothy Love Coates & the Original Gospel Harmonettes. SG It includes the lines “You can’t hurry God/ You just have to wait/ Trust and give him time/ No matter how long it takes.” In the Supremes’ hands, Diana Ross sings “as someone who wants to be in a relationship and who finds herself getting more and more impatient.” SG It “works less as a lonely woman’s lament and more as a piece of romantic advice.” SG Cash Box summed it up as a “pulsating pop-R&B rhythmic ode which contends that romance is a slow-developing game of give-and-take.” WK Phil Collins’ 1982 cover of the song reached #10 in the United States and topped the charts in the UK, doing even better than the #3 peak of the original. Dozier considers it one of the best covers of a song by the Supremes. FB Dozier would later co-write “Two Hearts,” a #1 song in the United States for Collins from the 1988 movie Buster. Resources: FB Fred Bronson (2003). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (5th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 207. DJ David Jasen (2002). A Century of American Popular Music: 2000 Best-Loved and Remembered Songs (1899-1999). Routledge: Taylor & Francis, Inc. Page 221. SF Songfacts SG Stereogum (9/18/2018). “The Number Ones” by Tom Breihan WK Wikipedia Related Links: First posted 2/6/2023.

Destiny’s Child “Say My Name” hit #1

Say My Name Destiny’s Child

Writer(s): Rodney Jerkins, Fred Jerkins III, LaShawn Daniels, Beyoncé Knowles, LeToya Luckett, Kelly Rowland, LaTavia Roberson (see lyrics here) Released: November 7, 1999 First Charted: December 4, 1999 Peak: 13 BB, 11 BA, 3 GR, 3 RR, 13 RB, 3 UK, 9 CN, 14 AU, 23 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, 1.2 UK, 4.85 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 0.3 radio, 416.32 video, 818.98 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: “Make no mistake: ‘Say My Name’ is a Beyoncé record. There are four people on the cover of that single…but Beyoncé is the only person who sings lead…That was probably a power play on the part of Beyoncé and of her father, Destiny’s Child manager Mathew Knowles. But “Say My Name” is a perfect song.” SG It “works on all sorts of levels — as soap-operatic melodrama, as futuristic technological brain-warp, as club-jam singalong.” SG “At the time, Beyoncé was one of a few R&B singers inventing a whole new form of delivery — a complex and rhythmically sophisticated cadence that moved and breathed with the track itself.” SG Of the four people on the cover, two were gone by the time the song hit #1. LaTavia Roberson and LeToya Luckett had been friends with Beyoncé since they were kids but resented how she and Kelly Rowland got more attention and money. When they saw the video for the song on BET, they realized they were out of the group as two other girls (Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin) lip-synced their parts. Farrah didn’t last six months, but the group continued as a trio with Williams. Beyoncé came across like a modern-day Diana Ross, who “jettisoned the old friends who helped her get rich and famous in the first place…but all the drama within the Supremes never stopped anyone from thinking of Diana Ross as a pantheon-level pop star, and the same thing happened with Beyoncé.” SG Rodney Jerkins, who’d produced “The Boy Is Mine” for Brandy and Monica and “If You Had My Love” for Jennifer Lopez signed on to work with Destiny’s Child on The Writing’s on the Wall, the group’s second album. Beyoncé would later say she couldn’t stand “Say My Name” because “There was just too much stuff going on in it.” SG She even said the song wasn’t going to make the cut for the album, but then he remixed it with more emphasis on the vocals, turning it into what Beyoncé then called “an amazing, timeless R&B record…It was one of the best songs we ever had, one of the best he’s ever produced.” SG He “throws every trick in his arsenal at the track. Strings spiral through busily jaunty figures. Drum machines dance through syncopated stop-start patterns. Squelching funk guitars strut in, and then Jerkins chops them up almost to the point of abstraction. Jerkins throws so much else at the track: wind-chime swooshes, soft G-funk synth-wines, an electronic boiiiiing sound effect…But even with all those different sounds percolating away, ‘Say My Name’ deals in a simple, relatable relationship dilemma.” SG Songwriter LaShawn Daniels had the idea for the song’s lyrics. His girlfriend was jealous if she heard anyone in the background when she called him and would demand, “Well, say my name then, and tell me that you love me.” SG It became a song in which “Beyoncé’s narrator is…consumed with that wounded, destabilized feeling,” SG “convinced that her significant other is cheating.” SG Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Destiny’s Child SG Stereogum (8/8/2022). “The Number Ones” by Tom Breihan Related Links: First posted 4/29/2024.

TLC “No Scrubs” hit #1

No Scrubs TLC

Writer(s): Kevin "She'kspere" Briggs, Kandi Burruss, Tameka "Tiny" Cottle, Lisa Lopes (see lyrics here) Released: February 2, 1999 First Charted: February 19, 1999 Peak: 14 BB, 113 BA, 2 GR, 2 RR, 39 A40, 110 RB, 3 UK, 12 CN, 17 AU, 20 DF (Click for codes to charts.) Sales (in millions): 5.0 US, 2.4 UK, 8.26 world (includes US + UK) Airplay/Streaming (in millions): 0.4 radio, 434.20 video, 1002.04 streaming

Awards: Click on award for more details.

About the Song: TLC’s 1994 sophomore album, Crazy Sexy Cool, sold 15 million copies worldwide and gave the trio two #1 singles, making them “the most popular girl group on the planet.” SG It would be five years before their next release, thanks to an exploitive contract that forced them to file for bankruptcy. However, they roared back in 1999 with Fan Mail and the lead single, “No Scrubs.” In the first line of the song, TLC explain that, “A scrub is a guy who thinks he’s fly and is also known as a busta — always talking ’bout what he wants and just sits on his broke ass.” “The members of TLC are sick of hearing pickup lines from chumps, and they spend the song telling the world exactly what they don’t want – deadbeats, guys who look like trash, anyone with the temerity to hang out the side of his best friend’s ride trying to holler at them.” SG “It’s mean but pretty. It disrupts and soothes at the same time. There’s a strange beauty to the way those voices drift over the complicated drum patterns and sparkly chopped-up guitar notes. When the backup singers come together to softly murmur the song’s title again and again, they sound almost mystical.” SG The song was written by producer Kevin “She’kspere” Briggs with Kandi Burruss and Tameka “Tiny” Cottle, former members of Xscape, another R&B girl group. They had four top-ten hits and three platinum albums before LaTocha Scott left for a solo career. Burruss and Cottle intended to move forward as the group KAT. When they reworked a song by She’kspere as “No Scrubs,” they weren’t intending to shop it, but after he played it for TLC’s producer Dallas Austin he wanted it for his group. FB It is “a gleaming, gorgeous example” SG of the “the sleek alien textures and jittery herky-jerk drum programming that Timbaland brought to the R&B mainstream,” SG although he didn’t work with TLC on the song. “A fluttering acoustic guitar line dissolves into a frantic popping sound. When the beat kicks in, the layers of sound pile up – the humming synth-strings, the stop-start drums, the dancing hi-hat.” SG Tionne “T-Boz” Watkins sang lead on every previous TLC song, but Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas took the mike for “No Scrubs.” She “doesn’t have T-Boz’s all-consuming languor, and she doesn’t need it. She just needs to project authority, and she does that beautifully.” SG Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes delivers “a rap verse, a fun chattery burst of verbiage,” SG that appears only on the single version of the song. Resources: DMDB encyclopedia entry for TLC FB Fred Bronson (2007). The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (4th edition). Billboard Books: New York, NY. Page 880. SG Stereogum (7/6/2022). “The Number Ones” by Tom Breihan Related Links: First posted 4/6/2024.