Released: December 1973
Masterpiece was a pretty good album, but lacked romance.
In his final production for the Temptations, Norman Whitfield relented and provided three romantic songs to go alongside four dance/social message songs. The results are the best Temptations album since With A Lot O’ Soul back in 1967.
Let’s take it track by track.
“Let Hair Your Down” is a weird construction based on the two incarnations of Sly & the Family Stone. The psychedelic soul lyrics are outdated and better fit for 1968, so there’s your early, bubbly Family Stone influence. The actual music though is very much inspired by early 70s sludge funk Family Stone found on albums like Fresh. Most telling in that regard is the use of an early drum machine. By late 1973 even that sound was a bit passe, but you can’t deny the funk on this song.
“Let Your Hair Down” is a fiery piece of work that comes in and does it job in short order (2:39). And I love the part where Dennis Edwards comments, “This is the part of the song where the horns take the throne” and the horns start blasting away.
Damon Harris then gets to belt away on “I Need You”, a moody ballad sprinkled with jazz-funk. Its dramatic, sudden string-drenched ending segues perfectly into “Heavenly” which is a soft soul duet between Harris and Richard Street. This song is right up there in the upper room of Temptations ballads. That drum machine shows up again and is perfect in softening up the impact of this golden song.
The final romantic track is “You've Got My Soul On Fire”, which to my ear takes the musical carcass of “Cloud Nine” and repurposes it more for funk and less for psychedelic soul. I’m not complaining. The song is great to me. Good use of live drums and acoustic guitar on this track too.
Side 1 finishes up with “Ain’t No Justice”. To no one’s surprise reading that title it’s a message song, but it’s better than most thanks to the synth bass. I’m not sure how it was created, but it’s some good shit coupled with that drum machine.
REPORT ON COMMERCIAL SUCCESS: This album peaked at #2 R&B and #19 pop. The singles were “Let Your Hair Down” (#1 R&B, #27 pop); “Heavenly” (#8 R&B, #43 pop); and “You’ve Got My Soul On Fire” (#8 R&B, #74 pop).
Side 2 ain’t got but two songs.
The first is the weakest song on the album, “1990”. And if this is the weakest song, then you know this album is indeed good. “1990” simultaneously praises the United States and derides the country as Edwards admits “despite all your troubles and woes, in my eyes you’re still the greatest of them all.” The opening is also notable for having a jazzy laid back guitar suddenly interrupted by police officers. The cops rough up the Temptations who are complaining about the brutality.
Certainly makes for an interesting artifact for a history class, that’s for sure.
Finally, we arrive at what might be the album’s best song, which is an amazing thing to say considering “Zoom” is nearly 14 minutes long and has no substantial lyrics of any kind. Hell, this might be the best psychedelic song the Temptations ever made. I guess by this point in music history we’ve moved from psychedelica to prog sounds, so this is the Temptations’ best prog song. No doubt about that!
The song starts off the with fellas just talking randomly to each other about space travel, UFOs, and whatnot. Then Melvin Franklin starts doing a countdown and the other guys are like, “What’s that counting?” I guess they were abducted.
As ghostly calls of “zoom” are sang in the background, Edwards growls “we’re on our way to the moon.”
Yes, this is as fantastically ridiculous as it sounds. Musta been a lot of weed consumed in the production of this track. I mean there’s lines about buildings, taxes, music, and the people getting higher than ever before.
ALBUM GRADE: A-
A good end to the group’s long collaboration with Norman Whitfield, who would move on to his new musical muse: Rose Royce. In fact Rose Royce provided some instrumentation on this album.
Despite losing their producer, the Temptations would be far from done.
Song Scores
Let Your Hair Down: 7.5/10
I Need You: 7.5/10
Heavenly: 8.5/10
You've Got My Soul On Fire: 7.5/10
Ain’t No Justice: 7.5/10
1990: 7/10
Zoom: 9/10