Motown’s slogan was “The sound of young America,” and its inclusiveness was deliberate: its greatest records of the ’60s didn’t just cross over between black and white audiences but brought them together. “Where Did Our Love Go?” was a creative leap for two trios — one of women, one of men. The songwriting-production team of Lamont Dozier and Brian and Eddie Holland originally wrote it for the Marvelettes, who turned it down; instead, it ended up in the hands of another girl group, the Supremes, who had been pounding the boards for five years with little success.
“Where Did Our Love Go?” was pitched too low for Diana Ross to sing comfortably, but that gave her lead vocal the murmuring reserve that makes the song so affecting. And Holland-Dozier-Holland’s arrangement — whose foot stomps, by a kid who lived in Motown’s Detroit neighborhood, set the pace for millions of young American dancers — is so light and precise that it seems to hover in midair.
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