The Motown sound of Human Nature

I really thought of putting this one off for a later time lest I get more age jokes in the mail. That happens each time I write about oldies CDs and I must admit that there have been a lot of those lately. You are showing your age, they say. But then I listened to the album and it is so good I knew I just have to tell everybody about it. So I succumb now to the temptation and hopefully entice a reader or two into discovering Motown music again.

That was also what Human Nature probably thought when it decided to do Dancing in the Street. Why make another oldies album when its status as Australia’s top boy band allows the group to record any kind of music it likes? But then the first one, Reach Out: The Motown Record was so good and went five times platinum. It has been three years since so maybe the time is just right for another one. Besides, as everybody in the music business surely knows, the boy band market is in the doldrums again. Kids are buying either High School Musical or Fall Out Boy. But there are still so many beautiful songs from Motown just waiting for a chance to come out again in their new versions.

Motown was this record label formed in Detroit, Michigan by Berry Gordy Jr. in the late ’50s. It was the inspiration for the musical Dreamgirls. Its greatest achievement is the crossover of black music into the pop mainstream through the success of acts like the Jackson 5, Diana Ross, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, The Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, the Four Tops, Gladys Knight and the Pips, The Commodores and many others, whom Gordy molded into an elegant image of good looks and phenomenal musicality. Gordy has since sold Motown to Universal MCA but the music that he created remains. Amazingly, these classics just seem to get better and better over the years.

Now, Human Nature is made up of Michael Tierney on vocals, Andrew Tierney (vocals and keyboards), Toby Allen (vocals) and Phil Burton (vocals, keyboards and guitar). It started out as a do-wop group, which means that the boys are really strong vocally, but went pop when it started recording. Unlike other boy bands wherein good looks take precedence over singing prowess, Human Nature members are truly excellent singers.

Among the group’s early hits were Telling Everybody, Last to Know, Eternal Flame, He Don’t Love You, Whisper Your Name and Always Be with You. Given the do-wop background, doing The Motown Record did seem like a natural, though, risky progression, but I have a feeling that the move was actually made to save the group when the boy band market started to falter. And save it, it did.

It is not an easy job recording classic pop, more so the Motown kind, which is a blend of assorted forms of black music like soul, R ’n B, gospel, etc.

Human Nature with its unique blend of do-wop and boy band pop is up to the task. Much thought went to the production. I just love the way the strings were used in the arrangements and the songs truly sparkle.

Take too the way the boys are presented in the cover in suits and haircuts that echo the ’60s. And  truly interesting reading are those bits of Motown history about every cut found in the cover. I know there will be people who will say that Human Nature has again painted Motown white, but the band also made the songs fun, youthful and new again. And wasn’t that Gordy’s purpose when he created the label.

The lead cut is Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ Dancing in the Street. Then there are Ain’t No Mountain High Enough, ABC, Signed Sealed Delivered I’m Yours, You Can’t Hurry Love, Ain’t Too Proud to Beg, What’s Going On, Uptight Everything’s Alright, Please Mr. Postman, I Can’t Get Next to You, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted and a well-done a cappella take on Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me).

The CD comes with a bonus disc that contains live recorded versions of Dancing in the Street, then two cuts from The Motown Record, I Heard It Through the Grapevine and Stop in the Name of Love, plus How Sweet It Is (To be Loved by You), which is only available in the Special Edition album.