"Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Song 47:

"Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing" by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell

Peak: 8

Year: 1968

Year end position: 57

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 2/25

Chronological Songs by Artist: 13/25

Video?: No

Wikipedia?:  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain't_Nothing_Like_the_Real_Thing

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/marvingaye/aintnothingliketherealthing.html

If you are following along, you may be thinking, “Hey, didn’t we just have a song by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell”?  Why yes, we did.  Just a week ago, we had “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, which was our first two-artist song.  Back then, I expressed how surprised I was that that song only reached #19, given its popularity since.  Apparently, America was more primed to accept the Marvin and Tammi a year later when this song came around because it made it all the way to #8.  This was the 4^th duet between Marvin and Tammi to hit the charts from 1967-1968.

I was curious about the quick turnaround between an artists first and second songs alphabetically, since Marvin only has 7 songs between his first and second.  I wanted to know if that was a record.  After some searching, it turns out that it is not.  There are two artists that have their first and second songs appear consecutively.  Enrique Iglesias’s first two songs, “Bailamos” and “Bailando” are back to back in alphabetical order, and Dickie Goodman’s “Flying Saucer” and “Flying Saucer the 2^nd” are also back to back.  The last one is a bit of a cheat, but it technically counts.  So, pretty quick for Marvin, but record-setting quick.

The similarities between “Ain’t Nothing Like the Real Thing” and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” aren’t limited to the singers and similar title structure.  They both were written by the same writing team of Ashford & Simpson.  If you remember that post, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” was to be their gateway song to Motown records.  I’d say they accomplished their goal and established themselves as formidable hit makers.

I was searching the internet to see if there was a connection between this song and the Coca-Cola advertising campaign of Coke as “The Real Thing”.  I found out that that particular campaign started for Coke in 1969, just one year after this song charted, but I couldn’t find anything that said that one was influenced by the other.  It seems unlikely to me that they weren’t, since the phrasing is almost exactly the same.  It’s entirely possible that I wasn’t looking hard enough for that link.

I know I’ve said in the past that a big part of the reason why I like following the charts is what they can tell you about the times when the songs came out.  This song is a good example of that.  There’s nothing specifically dated about this song, like references to things that no longer exist.  The message of the song is pretty universal to any time period.  The thing that makes this song somewhat indicative of the times is if you think of the theme of the song in the context of the Vietnam War.

The song is about two people, a man and a woman that are separated.  The first verse is sung by Tammi Terrell, and she is explaining how she has a picture of her love.  Marvin Gaye comes in and he has the letters that she wrote to him.  They both come to the same conclusion that these things are just poor substitutes for the actual person.  This theme is repeated for the rest of the song.  In the last verse, Marvin is talking about his memories and saying “I’m well aware nothin’ can take the place of your being there.”

If you put this song in the context of the Vietnam War, it makes the song more poignant.  It’s not hard to imagine a soldier in the field reading a letter from his girlfriend, or that same girl looking at a picture and longing for the real person to be there.  Another thing that makes this song a little dated is that modern technology has made it much, much easier to stay in contact, even from half away around the world.  That doesn’t take anything away from the heartfelt emotion of this song in my opinion.

This song really works well as a duet between a man and a woman.  I’ve heard that there is a version that Donny and Marie Osmand sang.  That sounds a little strange to me, as I don’t really feel the brother / sister dynamic happening in this song.

"Ain't No Woman (Like the One I Got)" by The Four Tops

Song 46:

"Ain't No Woman (Like the One I Got)" by The Four Tops

Peak: 4

Year: 1973

Year end position: 60

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/17

Chronological Songs by Artist: 15/17

Video?: No

Wikipedia?:  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain't_No_Woman_%28Like_the_One_I've_Got%29

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/fourtops/aintnowomanliketheoneivegot.html

We are a dozen songs into the “Ain’t” list, and even though I didn’t mention it on the last song, we are more than half way done.  Today’s song is #12 of 20, so we have more than a week of songs to get through before we can start in on all the songs that start with something other than “Ain’t”.  I was looking through the remaining songs, and I was a little surprised to see just how many of them are older.  There is only 1 “Ain’t” song left that hit the charts after 1975.  I was curious to see if there was something going on with these songs, so I compared the distribution of “ain’t” songs versus the overall distribution of songs, and I found that the “Ain’t” songs are actually pretty representative of the charts overall.  I think that is more of an illustration of the overall songs than anything else.

I was having a bit of an issue with this song.  First off, the song is grammatically terrible.  There are at least three grammatical mistakes in the song title.  First off, it starts with “Ain’t”, which we have established is slang, at best.  The second thing in the title is that it starts off with the double negative “Ain’t No”, which would imply that there is a woman like the one he has.  Finally, the part of the title in the parenthesis is incorrect as well.  It should be “Like the One I’ve Got” or “Like the One I Have”.  If you notice the web address for the Wikipedia page, the corrected version is the name of the page.  Apparently, the good people at Wikipedia decided to make the correction for the Four Tops.  I had to double check this information, but the album lists it as “…One I Got”, and that’s how it is sung in the song, so I’m going with that as the correct (incorrect) phrasing.

I was looking into the Four Tops, and I’ve decided that they take the title for “Act Most Likely to Be Confused With the Temptations”.  To be honest, there’s really not a great way to keep the two separate.  They both came out at more or less the same time on the same record label and their sounds are pretty similar.  I only remember which songs are which through rote memory.  There are some differences.  The biggest, I think, is that the four members of the Four Tops stayed together continuously for over 40 years.  The Temptations certainly can’t make that claim.  Both the Temptations and the Four Tops are in my Hall of Fame.  The Four Tops wound up with 17 songs making the top 20.  I was a little surprised at the limits of their success.  If you look at all the Hall of Fame acts, they have the 149^th best average peak position for their hits that made this blog.  They have the lowest peak average of any act in the Hall of Fame that has had at least 2 #1 songs.  For comparison, there are 15 acts that have a higher average that never had a #1 song.

That takes nothing away from this song.  This was the Four Tops last Top 10 hit.  It was the first top 20 hit for them after they left Motown records.  Apparently, Motown decided to move their headquarters from Detroit to Los Angeles, and they were focusing much of their attention on newer acts like the Jackson Five and launching Diana Ross’s solo career.  The song was originally recorded by Hamilton, Joe Frank and Reynolds a year earlier, but it didn’t meet with any success.  That’s more to the benefit of the Four Tops.

The lyrics to this song sing like a male counterpoint to Christina Aguilera’s “Ain’t No Other Man”.  It’s pretty much a tribute to a specific woman.  The first verse is all about how great she is, and all the great things she is capable of doing.  The chorus leads you to believe that part of how great she is, is that she is not high maintenance.  There is a lyric “She don't ask for things, no diamond rings” that may tell you a little more about what the singer values than how great the woman is.  There is another place where this happens.  Right before the bridge, there is a somewhat strange line, “'Cause it's my word, my word she'll obey, now”.  This line is preceded by “I would kiss the ground she walks on”, which is a strange juxtaposition of sentiments.  The first almost sounds like groveling, and the second is almost the opposite.  That’s the only line that really jumps out at me as strange.  The rest of the song is nothing but ebullient praise.  I’m chalking up the “obey” line as a sign of the times that this song was recorded in.  It’s hard to imagine that saying a woman “obeying” wouldn’t be re-written nowadays.

"Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady" by Helen Reddy

Song 45:

"Ain't No Way to Treat a Lady" by Helen Reddy

Peak: 8

Year: 1975

Year end position: NA

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/11

Chronological Songs by Artist: 9/11

Video?: No

Wikipedia?:  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain't_No_Way_to_Treat_a_Lady

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/helenreddy/aintnowaytotreatalady.html

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I thought Diana Ross was an underappreciated artist given the number of songs she had that made it into the top 20.  I think today's artist may be on par, or even more underappreciated than Diana Ross.  At least people would come up with Diana Ross eventually if they tasked with naming acts that have had 10 or more top 20 hits.  I'm not so sure the same would be true for Helen Reddy.  I'll admit that I was surprised by the volume of songs that she had.  I did a little more research on her, and as of this posting, she is the 3rd most prolific Australian that we will get to on this blog (The Bee Gees and Olivia Newton John are #1 and #2 respectfully).

For some perspective, she had 11 top 20 songs over the course of 7 years.  That's a better run than Abba or Boyz II Men had over the same time frames, and I'm pretty sure that people think of them as sure fire Hall of Famers.

This also ends a 12-post run of songs by American artists.  The last non-American we've heard from was Phil Collins "Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)".

This song was the last top 10 song by Helen Reddy.  This was also the second song in a row that didn't make the yearend top 100 chart in the year it was released.  Yesterday's song makes some sense given that it only reached #16, but you would think that a song that hit #8 would show up somewhere on the yearend list.  Not so.  A big reason for that is the sheer volume of songs that were released and hit the charts in the 1970s.  In 1975, there were 168 songs that hit the top 20, so competition was tight to get into that final top 100.  For comparison, the song "Hey Mama" by David Guetta peaked at #8 last year (2015) and it finished #31.

Something I didn't know about this song was that it was a remake.  The original song was written and sang by a woman named Harriet Schock in 1974.  The story I read was that part of the reason for the lack of success of that version was that her recording was deemed too slow by an influential Los Angeles DJ, but that by the time she had re-recorded it, the DJ had quit, so her version never found an audience.  Apparently, the song was popular in certain circles to have been covered by a number of other acts in the next few years including Vikki Carr.  Helen Reddy seemed to waste no time picking the song up, because her version came out just a year later in 1975, and it wasn't just another song.  She named her whole album "No Way to Treat a Lady".

The song is very much a break up song as the title might lead you to believe.  The woman in the song is writing the song to her lover to tell him/her why they are leaving the relationship.  The first verse sets the tone for the song with the opening lines "I guess it was yourself you were involved with / I would have sworn it was me".  The accusation here is that the person that the singer is breaking up with feels that the other person was too self-centered to care too much for her.  Because of that, she is breaking up with him.  The verse spells out the initial argument, and the chorus is the resolution to that argument.  She says that she won't accept that behavior anymore, and her decision is to leave him.  The second verse follows the same pattern as the first verse.  It's just more evidence of the poor behavior.

The bridge is a little bit of a jab at the guy.  She essentially is saying that because the guy is so self-absorbed, he probably won't be sad when she's gone.

The last verse is more of the piling on for this guy.  The only difference is that she's predicting that this cycle will probably repeat with another woman down the road.   The third verse closes with the lines "And before you know your own reflection / Always starts to tire you and it's happened again".  The way I read this is that she thinks that he'll eventually decide he needs someone else to provide him with attention, and everything she just went through will happen again.  At least this time, she won't be that person.  The song ends with the chorus two more times, so it's pretty clear that she's packed her bags for good.

Given that this song came in the midst of 2nd wave feminism in America, and is a song of female empowerment, it's not too surprising that this song found an audience in 1975.  That makes a song like this an interesting portrait of the times, and that's a lot of what I like to look at the charts for.

"Ain't No Way" by Aretha Franklin

Song 45:

"Ain't No Way" by Aretha Franklin

Peak: 16

Year: 1968

Year end position: NA

Alphabetical Songs by Artist: 1/27

Chronological Songs by Artist: 7/27

Video?: No

Wikipedia?:  Yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ain't_No_Way

Spotify?:  Yes

Lyrics:  http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/arethafranklin/aintnoway.html

When I first started this blog, I thought I was pretty well informed on the various songs I would run into.  I’ve had a few reactions that surprised me.  The first is that I’ve run into some songs that really don’t hold up very well, and it’s a bit of a challenge to not go too negative on them.  Then, there’s the songs that I wasn’t all that familiar with that turn out to be really, really good.  I think today’s song falls into the latter category.

First off, let’s get the grammar out of the way.  “Ain’t No Way” is really terrible grammatically.  It should really be “Isn’t Any Way”.  As we’ve seen with the run of “Ain’t” songs, if you are getting your English lessons from musicians, you are probably going to have a hard time graduating high school.  Other than that, the song title is pretty generic.

I should probably say up front that in my opinion, Aretha Franklin has the best voice that we will hear on this blog.  She’s not my favorite singer, per se, but I think that her voice is the strongest.  I am of the opinion that she could probably sing the names out of the phone book and it would sound pretty good.  Apparently I am not alone in this opinion.  Rolling Stone placed her as #9 in its list of Greatest Artists of all time, and #1 on its list of Greatest Singers of all time.  She exemplifies my opinion that singers with a gospel background are among the strongest singers, mostly because they practice so much early in life.  If you subscribe to Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours” rule for expertise, gospel singers get closer to that sooner than most.

 

I was unfamiliar with this song when I saw it come up on the list.  Because we are going alphabetically through the top 20 songs, you sometimes get some strange songs.  If I were going to introduce the world to Aretha Franklin’s music, I don’t know that this is the song that I would have chosen.  Listening to it for a while though, I’m warming up to the idea that it actually is a good representation of why I like Aretha Franklin so much.

The song was not originally designed to be a hit at all.  It was the B-side of another song we will hear: “(Sweet Sweet Baby) Since You’ve Been Gone”.  This makes this song an interesting phenomenon of a bygone era.  Nowadays, B-side singles don’t make sense, mainly because the method of getting songs out to the public has changed so much.  Back in the 1960s, the main way that people could consume music was through buying vinyl 45s.  It was also the way DJs would play music over the radio.  Most of the time, there was an A-side, which was supposed to be the hit song, and a B-side, which was just another track, but not supposed to be anything special.  There were times (especially in the 50s and 60s), when DJs would start to play both sides of the 45, and both the A-side and the B-side would hit the charts (usually at the same time).  This practice tailed off in the 70s and disappeared entirely by about the 1980s.  Today’s song was such a B-side.

The song was originally written by Aretha Franklin’s younger sister, Carolyn.  I was unaware that she had any siblings at all, but she had 2 sisters, both of which were in the music industry in one way or another.  The lyrics of the song are about a woman that wants to love her man, but the man is doing something that is preventing her from doing that.  You never really know what that thing is, but lyrics read like frustration on the part of the singer.  There is a line in the bridge where Aretha sings, “And if you need me like you say, say you do / Oh then please, please /Please don't you know that I need you?”  This is maybe my favorite part of the song.  It’s the part of the song where Aretha’s really belting out the notes, and you can almost feel the frustration that she is feeling.  I think the repeating of the words “say” and “please” give the song real feeling here.  Then she repeats the line “Oh, it ain't no way”, but then something interesting happens.  You’ve just been taken down this frustrated road, and in comes the background singer with this soaring set of notes to lift you up out of the blues that Aretha just took you through.  It turns out that this is no ordinary background singer.  It is none other than Cissy Houston (mother of Whitney Houston), and she has incredible range which she puts on display in this song.  I think that combination of the two powerful voices on the song elevate it above just another run-of-the-mill blues song.

Listening to this song over the last week, I think I will be adding it to my favorites.  I could listen to this song 1,000 times in a row and never get tired of it.  It’s like a master class in blues singing.