(Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej / Motown Records)
Mon 16 February 2026 0:00, UK
You can’t say that The Beatles were going around making many enemies in their time, but if anyone were to come close, it might have been The Supremes.
The two were most obviously stalwarts of the heady 1960s era, albeit at pretty opposite ends of the spectrum. The Beatles were the rock and roll senior leaders of the British invasion, while The Supremes were the storming girl group trio who mastered the heights of Motown before capturing the hearts of America and taking on the rest of the world. They were so different, and yet so similar at the same time.
With a whole rack of number one hits each to their respective names, there was nothing stopping this pair of powerhouse bands, immensely powerful and instrumental to the rest of music history in the decades that have passed since. In one sense, The Beatles won the battle with 21 chart toppers over the course of their tenure.
But beneath the surface, The Supremes were winning the war. Although statistically they were slightly less successful than the Fabs in the chart-topping regard, with 12 number ones to their name, they had an unsuspecting strategy that won them over in the history books to a place that The Beatles could never have imagined.
The Supremes were the ones to knock the Liverpudlian legends off the top spot, not once, not twice, but a grand total of three times in a golden streak at the height of the ‘60s. They did it with such soaring ease, time and time again, that you almost have to hand it to them as a greater achievement than anything The Beatles achieved alone.
The Supremes songs knocked The Beatles off number one
The high-speed chase between the bands began just at the end of 1964, when the Fab Four were reigning loud and proud for three weeks with their sixth Billboard number one, ‘I Feel Fine’. But it was the mark of Diana Ross and Co that they soon came along to unexpectedly upset this hierarchy, overthrowing the kings from their throne with the aptly-titled ‘Come See About Me’.Â
Advancing their battalion one step further, The Supremes continued making gains with their new warfare tactic later in the year, producing their crown jewel of ‘Stop! In the Name of Love’ to usurp ‘Eight Days a Week’ after its two-week stint at the top. The fact that The Beatles were climbing with a song about extending time, while The Supremes were freezing it, was actually quite poetic.
But the deciding blow in this battle was the mightiest one of them all, when The Supremes played the true trump card against a Beatles hit that many suspected could never be knocked off its course to the league of legends. Of course, ‘Hey Jude’ still got there in the end, but there was a fight between it and ‘Love Child’ to conquer first. Perhaps needless to say, but The Supremes won again.
While it wasn’t exactly a David versus Goliath situation, nor a case of a real full-blown beef between the two, the chart successes of The Supremes simply prove that The Beatles weren’t as impossible to topple as many might like to make out. The trio were trailblazers in many ways, but when it came to squaring up to the Fab Four, they could only do it the Motown way.
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.