Zoom Meeting #2

"Three times a lady" has very soft vocals almost like
whispering Bill Anderson on the country side of things.
Motown probably wasn't really thinking A/C crossover at
this time from their leading funksters. "I like what you
do" and "Visions" were the most original cuts.

Gordy wasn't also thrilled with some of the themes in
Marvin's "What's going on" despite Edwin Starr has a
huge hit with with "War."

It always helps to make sure the PD gets a promo. They
even had issues in NYC getting promos.

Interesting reading these comments. I would have
thought that when an album was released, it was fair
game for any track to be played on the radio. I guess
the labels didn't want top 40 stations to play songs
that weren't singles, because it could take time away
from playing the songs that they were promoting as
singles?

When an album was released, in most cases were all the
singles planned out in advance (for example, they knew
which would be the second single, which would be the
third, etc.) or was it decided on on the fly?
Sometimes its obvious which songs should be singles
but was the order of release always set in stone, or
did it vary based on whims of the label, or strong
responses on certain songs? In reading Billboard over
the years, it seems that some songs they said would be
later singles never did get released.

I know that when "Thriller" was in the midst of its
run, the plan was originally to make "Human Nature"
the last single, but because sales of the album were
still so strong, they kept releasing them.

Was there a scenario which occurred more frequently?

Like all art, what the next single would be was never
set in stone and alot depended on how the early
singles did. If they didn't do well, the label would
usually cut their losses with a hole punch and trip to
the cut-out bin if the cost of warehousing a title
exceeded any benefit of future expected sales.

Atlantic Starr had a number of album air cuts before
was monitored at Billboard and they did it to sell the
album. A&M didn't release those probably to sell the
album but if you listen to "Secret lovers", their
ballads weren't easy to edit with vocals having to be
cross-faded.

I remember reading that promoters wanted country to
drop a song after it peaked. In 1991, Billboard used
accurate monitoring of sales and airplay and the
logjam on the pop chart began. In the end, Billboard
slowly ushered in new expanded rules for their
recurrent chart to increase the desired upward
movement.

By the 80's, albums had songs slated for different
formats. Black radio typically was a wake-up club in
the morning, hot urban AC in the day time, a R&B top
40 in evening, and free form Quiet Storm ballads at
night with all sorts of jazz mixed in. Any rap was
limited to the evening section and this held until
about the mid 90's.

Many ballads weren't released as singles as those
listeners had more money to buy albums and the
listener usually didn't want a truncated ballad.
Atlantic Starr was one of those groups. If you listen
to the Spinners first album on Atlantic, the shortest
songs were the hit singles and many ballads go on for
6 plus minutes and got heavy airplay especially at
night.