" Only My Imagination (Run with Me) " is a song by American soul group The Temptations. Released on the label Gordy (Motown), and produced by Norman Whitfield, featured on the 1971 album group, Sky's the Limit . When released as a single, "Just My Imagination" became the third Temptations song to reach number one on the US Billboard Hot 100. The single held number one on the Billboard Pop Singles Chart during two weeks in 1971, from 27 March to 10 April. "Just My Imagination" also occupies the number one spot on the Billboard R & D chart. B Singles for three weeks, from February 27 to March 20 that year.
Today, "Just My Imagination" is considered one of the Temptations' signature songs, and it is important to recall the 1960s group recordings. It is also the last Temptations single to feature founding members Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams. During the recording process and singles release, Kendricks left the group to start a solo career, while ill-tempered Williams was forced to retire from acts for health reasons. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine listed "Just My Imagination" as number 389 in the 500 Top Longest Songs list.
Video Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
Composition and lyrics
The orchestra setting is full of French strings and horns adorned with rhythm songs and bass lines that the blues provide are instrumental. Music critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine of allmusic notes that the song is narrated by a man who imagines a relationship with the woman he loves but is smart enough to realize that his daydream is fiction, yet overwhelmed by them. The lyrics catch his resignation to his fantasy. The song as a whole captures their full emotional effect on him. The first two verses set the theme and explore the narrator's daydream, where he and his object of affection are lovers preparing to marry, to "raise the family" and build a "comfortable little home in the country/with two children, maybe three. "On the bridge, the narrator prays that he will never lose his love to others, or he will surely die. "By introducing this doubt, the musical bridge simultaneously bridges the movement of the dream into reality, completed when the final line shifts from image to the bald Statement:" But in reality/he does not even know me. "For Erlewine," Temptations Show "has such qualities dream, quietly floating through the singer's wishes and desires. "We must add that just as the lyrics track the movement from dream to reality, the choir proceeds for a floating melody with a strong and very impressive rhythm.
Maps Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)
Origins
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, producer/composer Norman Whitfield and lyricist Barrett Strong created a series of psychedelic soul songs for Temptations. In 1970, Temptations has released psychically influenced hits such as Runaway Child, Running Wild, Psychedelic Shack, and the Grammy Award-winning Cloud Nine. In a 1991 interview, Eddie Kendricks recalls that many Temptations fans "screamed" after the group investigated the psyche, and demanded a return to the voice of its original soul.
"Just My Imagination" was the result of one of the few times Whitfield relented and produced the ballad as a single for the group. Whitfield and Strong wrote the song in 1969, but with single soul psychedelic Temptations consistently keeping them in the Top 20 US, Whitfield and Strong decided to set aside the composition and wait for the right time to record it. In the late 1970s, the single Temptations Unzena Za Ulimwengu (Unite the World), a psychedelic soul song about world peace, failed to reach the Top 30, and Whitfield decided to record and release "Only My Imagination" as the next single. He approached Barrett Strong, and asked him to pull out "the song we played a year ago... because I'm going to record it today." Except the 1960s duet with Diana Ross & amp; Supremes, Temptations has not released anything that was not based on psychedelia since "Please Return Your Love to Me" from The Wish It Would Rain in 1968.
Recording
Norman Whitfield started recording "Just My Imagination" by preparing instrumental songs. Whitfield organizes and records the instrumental non-instrumental elements with the Motown studio band, The Funk Brothers, which for this recording included Eddie "Chank" Willis on guitar, Jack Ashford on marimba, Jack Brokensha on timpani, Andrew Smith on drums, and Bob Babbitt on bass. Jerry Long, an arranger who had previous experience with scoring films in Paris, worked on orchestra arrangements and did some Detroit Symphony Orchestra members in performing horns and strings for recording. Temptations had heard the Funk Brothers trail and loved them, but were "completely knocked out", according to Otis Williams, when they heard "the recording was finished with all the strings."
The Temptations added their vocals at Motown's Hitsville USA headquarters. While all five Temptations usually sing leads on singles during the psychedelic psychedelic era, "Just My Imagination" is primarily a work for Eddie Kendricks, who sings leads on Temptations hit like "Get Ready," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," and "You're My Everything"; in fact, this was the only temptations hit in which Dennis Edwards did not have a lead vocalist during his tenure with the group. The Temptations remained at Hitsville on the overnight recording of "Just My Imagination," and while four other members went home at six in the morning, Kendricks remained in the studio, spending several additional hours recording taking for main vocals.
The song was recorded amid a bitter row between Kendricks and the de facto Temptations leader, Otis Williams. Unsatisfied and frustrated with Williams's leadership, Kendricks began withdrawing from the group, and picked several fights with Williams or his best friend, bassist Melvin Franklin. When Kendricks told his former Temptation friend David Ruffin about his problems in the group, Ruffin assured Kendricks that he should start a solo career. After the last fight during the Copacabana engagement of November 1970, Kendrick and Williams agreed that it would be better for Kendricks to leave the group. By the time "Just My Imagination" was recorded, Williams and Kendricks were no longer talking friendly. Nevertheless, Williams was impressed by the performance of Kendricks on the recording, and in his 1988 biography Temptations was called "Just My Imagination" as "Eddie's best moment."
Paul Williams, lead singer of The Temptations' and Kendrick's lifelong best friend, who sings the first line on the bridge ("Every night, on my knees, I pray..."), has suffered for three years from health related problems for alcoholism and cell disease sickle. By the time "My Imagination" was cut off, Paul Williams's contribution to the Temptations record had been reduced, and the group had an old associate of Otis Williams, Richard Street, who was lined up as a substitute for Paul Williams. As for Kendricks, he was eventually replaced by Damon Harris, who will be featured in the 1973 hit "Papa Was a Rollin 'Stone".
Release and acceptance
Motown released "Just My Imagination" as a single on their Gordy label on January 14, 1971, with an up-tempo psychedelic psychedelic song "You Make Your Own Heaven and Hell Right Here on Earth", from 1970 Psychedelic Shack LP, as the B-side. The Temptations performed "Just My Imagination" and "Get Ready" for their latest performances on The Ed Sullivan Show, broadcast live on January 31st. On the screen, Kendricks stood a few feet away from other Godtations, and little eye contact with them; Otis Williams later said that people can see that the group is no longer a complete unit:
But there is a bitter feeling like that. Eddie's really changed. Paul is at his last leg. Watch our clips performing songs on Ed Sullivan we are not together. Eddie died alone. There are no more groups. Sure enough, when we played the Copa that week, Eddie went in between the shows. He did not come back.
On February 7, 1971, "Just My Imagination" hit the Billboard Hot 100 US chart at number 71 and then number one on Hot 100 and US Billboard R & amp; Graphic Singel B. This is also the group's first entry on the Adult Contemporary graph, reaching number 33; the group will not return to the chart until 1984.
The single was included along with "Unite the World" on the ninth Temptations' regular studio album, Sky's the Limit , which included the latest Temptations record to feature Eddie Kendricks. He started working on his solo album All By Myself shortly before officially leaving the group.
The follow-up meant for "Just My Imagination" is "Sometimes Smiling Face", where Kendarn sings singing. When Kendricks left, they released, instead, "I'm The Exception to the Rule", a song in the same tone (featuring Kendricks, Otis Williams and Edwards on lead) following "Just My Imagination" on the album. Unable to promote the song because they do not have anyone to do its part in the concert, the track failed miserably so the company pushed the "B-side" - re-record the group "It's Summer", originally the B-side of "Ball of Confusion", at the last minute , and Norman Whitfield has a record of the Indisputable Truth "Sometimes Smiling Face", for whom it becomes a big blow. The Temptations and Norman Whitfield returned to psychedelic psychedelic souls for their next album, Solid Rock, whose second single, "Superstar (Remember How You Got Where You Are)", written by Whitfield and Barrett Strong as alleged criticism of Kendrick and David Ruffin.
Performance chart
Note
References
- Bronson, Fred (2003). Billboard Book Number One Hits (5th ed.). New York: Billboard. ISBNÃ, 0-8230-7677-6. .
- Crittall, Bill; et al. (December 9, 2004). "500 Greatest Songs of All Time". Rolling Stone (963): 65-163 . Retrieved 2008-11-07 . Ã, . (An EBSCO subscription is required for online access.)
- Williams, Otis; Romanowski, Patricia (2002). Temptations (Revised ed.). Lanham, MD: Cooper Square. ISBNÃ, 0-8154-1218-5. Ã, .
Further reading
-
"Just My Imagination (Run with Me)". Super Seventies Rocksite! . Retrieved 2008-11-07 . Ã, .
External links
- Lyrics of this song in MetroLyrics
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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