Those Supremes singles (once they found their footing after flopping around in Motown’s sales cellar for a couple of years) are a thing of beauty. As a kid, I remember constantly playing a greatest hits album of theirs. It had a royal blue cover, with a drawing of the girls on the cover. I think it came out around 1967, so they still had about three years of Diana left (to say nothing of the great music they continued to make after Miss Ross went on to her solo career.) Even still, two slabs of vinyl with so much ear candy it was ridiculous. Aside from The Beatles, no one in the ‘60s mastered the pop single the way The Supremes did.

“Back In My Arms Again” was their fifth #1 single in a row. It featured a particularly on-fire version of The Funk Brothers (that horn section was cooking with fish grease!) It also features one of Holland/Dozier/Holland’s cutest lyrics. Diana’s seeing a fella that her friends aren’t too crazy about, and she calls Mary and Flo out specifically. The lyrics make the Supremes sound not like just a singing group, but a girl gang, or a sisterhood. I dig that.