Golden Nuggets #17: The Jackson Five- ABC

It's been quite a while, but I'm back to deliver the seventeenth installment of the Golden Nuggets series. With the combination of the pandemic, lack of motivation, and a broken laptop, it took me a minute to get back into the swing of things and start writing again. Now, normally this series takes on the number one Billboard hit from around the week of release 50 years prior, but it's going to take a minute to catch up now that I'm four months (yikes) behind, but hopefully I can get back into the game and start pumping these out, along with maybe some other content. Today we'll be looking at the classic track from the Jackson Five, "ABC". If you've somehow never heard the song (liar), or just want a refresher, you can check out the link here. Hopefully that link's still up; I made the draft for this post four months ago and I'm too lazy to check. Digressions aside, let's get started.

First things first, one of the many reasons I've been putting off writing was simply my uncertainty as how to tackle discussing this song. It's probably one of the most famous songs in Motown's catalog (and that's saying something), so there's obviously been a wealth of material written on just this song alone. For my part, I like the song alright. The melody is nice, lyrics are catchy and the groove is pretty tight. I really enjoy the fuzz tone on either the bass or guitar (can't really tell) that you don't really hear on a lot of bubblegum pop records, but other than that, this track doesn't hold a lot of nostalgia for me. My dad was about 14 when this song came out, and I feel like he would have been listening to stuff like Chicago or early prog stuff around this time, so I didn't really get that personal connection you get when your parents play their music to you as a kid. Admittedly, I'm not really into a lot of '60s Motown stuff, and even though this dropped in 1970, it still has a '60s feel to it. I feel like until Marvin Gaye challenged the assembly line formula of Motown with What's Going On, a lot of Motown was pretty boilerplate, meat and potatoes disposable pop. That may be blasphemy to some, but I'll take '70s Stevie Wonder or Marvin Gaye over a '60s girl group or Miracles record any time.

I think the experimentation into other forms of music other than pop and R&B wasn't really allowed in the '60s and early '70s at Motown, and as such, there's not a lot of diversity or depth there. That being said, I feel like this song is pretty good for what it is, and I can definitely see why it became popular. This song has survived for fifty years, and endured through the dissolution of the Jackson Five, the exposure of Joe Jackson's heavy handed (pun intended) managerial "parenting" that propelled the groups, and Michael Jackson's own controversies. The public has to have a pretty big personal investment in a song for it to survive relatively unscathed through all the years and scandals like that, even if I don't really get it. A solid hit? Sure. A classic? Of course. Defining song of a generation and childhood? Maybe for others, but not so much for myself or my parents.

Next time (hopefully soon), I'll be taking a look at the song 'American Woman', by the Guess Who, which unfortunately, is just as prescient as the day it was recorded. Some things never change it would seem. 

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