The Definitive 1000 Songs Of All Time 1955 to 2005: Number 716

Sunday, November 26, 2006

Number 716 - Diana Ross

Number 716

Diana Ross

"Reflections"

(1967)

Genre:Pop

SECOND only to the Beatles in sixties record sales, the Supremes (Diana Ross, Mary Wilson, and Florence Ballard, later replaced by Cindy Birdsong) were America's greatest "girl" group. The girls grew up in a Detroit housing project and were guided to superstardom by Motown's Berry Gordy. The sinuous, scintillating Ross soon took center stage and the group's name was changed to Diana Ross and the Supremes. Ross went solo in 1970, and made the charts with Ashford and Simpson's sappy "Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)." She then scored a No. 1 hit with "Ain't No Mountain High Enough." Her emotional ballads ("Touch Me in the Morning") and disco hits ("Love Hangover") continued to chart throughout the seventies.

Ross followed her Oscar-nominated 1972 acting debut as Billie Holiday in Lady Sings the Blues with the critically panned Mahogany and The Wiz. Her private life also took a beating: her five-year marriage to a nice Jewish guy in the real estate business ended in divorce in 1976, and she moved with their three daughters to New York's Central Park West. She rebounded in 1979 when her new album, The Boss, went gold, and she continued her streak with 1980's Diana, which went platinum; it also produced three Top 10 singles. In 1985, the pop diva married Norwegian millionaire Arne Naess. She hit the charts again, in 1991, with The Force Behind the Power. In 1994, she starred in Out of Darkness, a movie of the week on ABC in which she played a schizophrenic who is repeatedly institutionalized.

For the Beatles see Number 489, #587, #894 & #947

For Elvis Presley see Number 443, #501 & #840

What does Rolling Stone think of Diana Ross

The biggest Supremes and Diana Ross hits in one place in the spirit of recent collections by the Beatles and Elvis, the folks entrusted with the Motown catalog have remixed and remastered the biggest hits by the ultimate girl group, the Supremes. Both a primer for young listeners and motivation for old fans to buy beloved classics one more time, The No. 1's includes not only the threesome's fourteen chart-toppers, eight Ross solo smashes and a sophisticatedly funky post-Ross Supremes jam ("Stoned Love") but also a few extra seconds of unheard music at the tail end of many hits. Some of the differences may shock: "Stop! In the Name of Love" now comes to a full, sudden stop.

Rolling Stone Top 500 Songs ranked this song at Number (2nd only to The Beatles huh?) and the Album ranked at Number (Pah! means nothing to us)

This song has a crowbarred rating of 67.7 out of 108 pts