{"id":113893,"date":"2025-09-04T11:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-04T11:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/113893\/"},"modified":"2025-09-04T11:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-04T11:58:08","slug":"the-motown-song-that-toppled-the-beatles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/113893\/","title":{"rendered":"The Motown song that toppled The Beatles"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Bent Rej \/ Motown Records)<\/p>\n

Wed 3 September 2025 20:30, UK <\/p>\n

It takes a lot to topple an empire, and by the late 1960s, The Beatles<\/a> had a colossal one stretching from Blackburn to Bhutan, with more power than some dictators. It would have taken something very special to depose the Fab Four from that throne.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Across the Atlantic, the 1960s saw the dawn of another empire in Detroit that would rule the pop charts as a collective. With the founding of Motown, Berry Gordy Jr\u2019s label started in the tail-end of the 1950s as Tamla, no time was wasted in their launching of now-iconic artists, from Little Stevie Wonder to Diana Ross and The Supremes, shaping the American pop sensibilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A threat to statistical supremacy but also respectable, The Beatles and Motown shared a relationship akin to Robert De Niro and Al Pacino in Heat. Detroit\u2019s infectious R&B and soul sounds played a huge role in inspiring the band, so much so that they chose to record three Motown covers<\/a> for their 1963 album With The Beatles. In return, Gordy\u2019s business instinct offered the group reduced royalty rates, in the hopes that their versions of tracks like \u2018You Really Got a Hold on Me\u2019 would elevate Motown\u2019s reach in the UK.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even when The Beatles began to move away from that pop-centric sound of their early years, exploring vast and innovative avenues of psychedelic inspiration on records like Revolver, the band continued to pay homage to Gordy\u2019s label with tracks like \u2018Got to Get You into My Life\u2019. By that time, though, The Beatles had well and truly eclipsed Hitsville USA, both commercially and artistically.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Few releases captured the extent of the Fabs\u2019 success quite so all-encompassingly as the 1968 single \u2018Hey Jude\u2019, an irrefutable masterpiece<\/a> of songwriting by Paul McCartney. The non-album single ended up being the band\u2019s first release on their very own Apple label, and it was rewarded with unprecedented success all across the globe. It fared particularly well in the US, where its nine-week run at the top of the singles chart made it one of the most successful singles in US history at that point.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fact, its nine-week run at number-one was record-breaking at the time, and it remained the longest-charting number-one in America until years later, when Debbie Boone\u2019s \u2018You Light Up My Life\u2019 bizarrely spent ten weeks at the top spot. \u2018Hey Jude\u2019 might have extended its incredible run at the Top of The Pops too, were it not for The Beatles\u2019 old friends at Motown Records.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Motown\u2019s commercial power arguably peaked in the mid-1960s, during the era of Holland-Dozier-Holland masterpieces like \u2018Baby Love\u2019, \u2018Heatwave\u2019, and \u2018Reach Out\u2019, but, when the trio left the label in 1968, Gordy and the gang were forced to adapt. The Supremes, as the label\u2019s flagship act, were particularly affected by the songwriters\u2019 departure, and so a lot of resources were poured into keeping the Diana Ross-fronted outfit in the pop consciousness, which eventually produced the track \u2018Love Child\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A controversial classic, dealing with the topic of teenage pregnancy, the song became an unlikely hit for The Supremes and Motown, marking a high point of the post-Holland-Dozier-Holland years. In fact, the song proved so popular with mainstream audiences that it reached number one on the singles chart, pushing \u2018Hey Jude\u2019 off the top spot for the first time in nine weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is fair to say that \u2018Hey Jude\u2019 had the last laugh; \u2018Love Child\u2019 didn\u2019t achieve nearly the same degree of critical or commercial success upon its release, and the songwriting quality certainly doesn\u2019t match up to McCartney\u2019s magnum opus. Nevertheless, the fact that the single was able to depose The Beatles from the top spot, at the peak of their relevancy, is reflective of the all-encompassing power of the Motown empire.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Bent Rej \/ Motown Records) Wed 3 September 2025 20:30, UK It takes a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113894,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,29535,128,6470,10447,54876,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-113893","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-motown","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-paul-mccartney","12":"tag-the-beatles","13":"tag-the-supremes","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113893"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113893\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113894"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}