The Supremes "The Supremes A' Go-Go" [1966]

Oh, that 60s Motown sound: the peppy, major-chord keyboards, strings and horns that make this self-conscious, insistent claim: "We colored folk ain't so scary." Following Smokey Robinson's Disney-cartoon falsetto and before Michael Jackson's precocious rug-rat soprano presided Diana Ross' airbrushed-diva approach, safe and clean as a bubble bath. Diana's sugar-princess persona makes Nancy Sinatra sound like a dominatrix by comparison, and the Berry Gordy-overseen production even made sure the hand-claps came on every beat so the white people listening in public wouldn't have to be embarrassed. But as music like The Supremes was calculated to have everyone remove from their imagination every speck of garbage on the streets of inner-city Detroit, Motown's zero-margin-for-error made for lots of redundancy; you'd be forgiven for thinking you're listening to the same over-produced song every time you're not hearing another over-produced cover from a different Motown artist on this album. Diana Ross became a huge star after "A' Go-Go," largely among people who were made extremely nervous by women like Tina Turner and Martha & the Vandellas. Thus, with The Supremes Gordy achieved the perfect commercial retort to the growing pains of Civil Rights legislation in the U.S. -- black people are OK as long as they don't perspire or show more than two dimensions. If you're still a fan of this music today, does that mean Tina Turner still makes you nervous?