1. My Girl, The Temptations

            Perhaps the most effective, evocative three-note opening sequence in rock creates an aura of anticipation so utterly fulfilled when the guitar starts ascending and the voice comes in, “I’ve got sunshine…..on a cloudy day.” What a sunny, upbeat, mood-improving song! It’s hard, nay, impossible, not to smile any and every time I hear this classic from the Temptations. “hey-hey-hey!” It has even weathered a commercial use or three.

Beyond the song’s cheery brilliance is its place at the top of one of rock’s best sustained moments: the Motown era. This coincided, almost exactly, with my four college years, the peak of my dancing career. To this day, nothing gets the Marshalls out on the dance floor more surely than the Motown beat. And when I think of all the things I should have but didn’t learn in college, one of the foremost is the dance steps the Tempts used when singing this song.

Sidebar: Motown

            Shall I let My Girl stand for everything from the Motown corral? As good as Baby I Need Your Loving and I Can’t Help Myself (the “sugar pie honey bunch” song) are, the Four Tops put out a lot of plodding material. Smokey Robinson was the cleverest lyricist of the time, and The Tracks of My Tears holds up well. Aretha Franklin, Mary Wells, the Marvelettes, Marvin Gaye, all have one or two numbers that wouldn’t embarrass any list. But the only other Motown release that could fit on my Top 25 is Stop! In the Name of Love. The Supremes are the top female group of all time, and they had more hits in the ‘60s than anyone except Elvis and the Beatles. Like the Tempts, they performed a cool dance number, but what sets Stop! apart from the rest of the catalogue is the emotional wallop it packs. “I try so hard, hard to be patient, hoping you’d stop this infatuation.” Whew!