{"id":28341,"date":"2024-10-23T05:30:50","date_gmt":"2024-10-23T09:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=28341"},"modified":"2024-10-08T12:50:28","modified_gmt":"2024-10-08T16:50:28","slug":"album-review-the-supremes-i-hear-a-symphony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/10\/23\/album-review-the-supremes-i-hear-a-symphony\/","title":{"rendered":"Album Review: The Supremes \u2013 I Hear a Symphony"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Cogs in the Motown musical machine, the Supremes churned out albums with alacrity. 1966\u2019s I Hear a Symphony<\/i> was the group\u2019s eighth album. It was also the first of two released in that year. And it would also mark the final album to feature three of the group\u2019s original vocalists. Diana Ross and Mary Wilson had been there at the start in 1959 when their group was still known as the Primettes. Florence Ballard was there, too, but she would leave upon completion of I Hear a Symphony<\/i>, with Cindy Birdsong coming in.<\/p>\n

The Supremes had been making a habit of releasing albums each with a theme all its own. The titles of A Bit of Liverpool<\/i> (1964), The Supremes Sing Country, Western and Pop<\/i> and We Remember Sam Cooke<\/i> (both \u201865) all make their contents plain.<\/p>\n

The production and arrangement on the album is stellar. The team of Holland\/Dozier\/Holland may have picked u pa few ideas from Bran Wilson, or they may have arrived at their special place all on their own. The details don\u2019t matter: what we\u2019re left with an ear candy of the sweetest sort.<\/p>\n

Highlights about, but \u201cMy World is Empty Without You\u201d is among them. There\u2019s nothing particularly original about the tune: in familiar tone, lyric and instrumentation it\u2019s immediately identifiable as a Supremes cut, but when one finds a formula that works, why not \u2013 the thing goes \u2013 just run with it? And so they would.<\/p>\n

Ms. Ross sings the lead of \u201cUnchained Melody\u201d a couple octaves higher than those Righteous guys; the instrumentation sounds as if it\u2019s playing a block away from the singer, though. A cover of The Toys\u2019 \u201cA Lover\u2019s Concerto\u201d (itself a rewrite of Bach\u2019s \u201cMinuet in G Major\u201d) is flawless, if opportunistic; the Toys\u2019 record had been released mere months before.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything is Good About You\u201d is subued Spectorism, with lovely vibraphone and reliably crystalline vocal work that sounds effortless. The record\u2019s lesser known tracks are a mixed bag: the anachronistic \u201cWonderful, Wonderful\u201d almost sounds flown in from an earlier decade, one populated with Bing Crosbys, Perry Comos and such. \u201cWithout a Song\u201d wades heavily into the syrup, but an album with \u201csymphony\u201d in its title must do, one supposes.<\/p>\n

As a single, the album\u2019s title track sold more than two million units worldwide (half of those in the U.S). In its album form, I Hear a Symphony<\/i> charted well: #8 on Billboard<\/i>\u2019s album chart, and the top spot on its R&B chart. It marked the group’s most impressive album showings to date, with greater successes soon to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cogs in the Motown musical machine, the Supremes churned out albums with alacrity. 1966\u2019s I Hear a Symphony was the group\u2019s eighth album. It was also the first of two […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28342,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[51,60,64,65,73],"tags":[5535],"class_list":["post-28341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pop","category-rb","category-reissue","category-review","category-vinyl","tag-surpremes","cat-51-id","cat-60-id","cat-64-id","cat-65-id","cat-73-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28343,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28341\/revisions\/28343"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}