"Love Child" | ||||
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Single by Diana Ross & the Supremes | ||||
from the album Love Child | ||||
B-side | "Will This Be the Day" | |||
Released | September 30, 1968 | |||
Recorded | Hitsville U.S.A. (Studio A); September 17, September 19, and September 20, 1968 | |||
Length | 2:54 (album/single version ) 3:14 (2003 remix) | |||
Label | Motown M 1135 | |||
Songwriter(s) | R. Dean Taylor, Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer, Deke Richards | |||
Producer(s) | The Clan (R. Dean Taylor, Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer, Deke Richards) and Henry Cosby | |||
Diana Ross & the Supremes singles chronology | ||||
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Love Child track listing | ||||
12 tracks
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External media | ||||
"Love Child" (audio) on YouTube | ||||
"Love Child" (The Ed Sullivan Show,January 5,1969) on YouTube | ||||
Alternative cover | ||||
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"Love Child" is a 1968 song released by the Motown label for Diana Ross &the Supremes. The second single and title track from their album Love Child ,it became the Supremes' 11th (and penultimate) number-one single in the United States,where it sold 500,000 copies in its first week and 2 million copies by year's end. [1]
The record took just three weeks to reach the Top Ten of Billboard's Hot 100 pop chart,which eventually it topped for two weeks (issues dated November 30 and December 7,1968), [2] [3] before being dethroned by an even bigger Motown single,Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through the Grapevine". "Love Child" also performed well on the soul chart —where it spent three weeks at no. 2 (behind Johnnie Taylor's "Who's Making Love") —and paved new ground for a major pop hit with its then-controversial subject matter of illegitimacy. [4] It is also the single that finally knocked the Beatles' "Hey Jude" off the top spot in the United States after its nine-week run. The Supremes debuted the dynamic and intense song on the season premiere of the CBS variety program The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday,September 29,1968. [5] [6] In Billboard's special 2015 chart of the Top 40 Biggest Girl Groups of All Time on the Billboard Hot 100,"Love Child" ranked highest among the Supremes' six entries. [7]
In 1967,Diana Ross &the Supremes dropped Florence Ballard,engaged new member Cindy Birdsong and added Ross's name to the billing. Following this string of changes,the Supremes had mixed success on the pop charts. "Reflections" peaked at no. 2 on the Billboard's Hot 100 and "In and Out of Love" peaked at 9,but the group's next two singles did not reach the Top 20.
This prompted Motown label chief Berry Gordy to hold a special meeting in a room at the Pontchartrain Hotel in Detroit,which was attended by a team of writers and producers at the label,including R. Dean Taylor,Frank Wilson,Pam Sawyer,Deke Richards,and Henry Cosby. The group,calling themselves the Clan,set to work on a hit single for Diana Ross &the Supremes. Instead of composing another love-based song,the team decided to craft a tune about a woman who is asking her boyfriend not to pressure her into sleeping with him,for fear they would conceive a "love child". The woman,portrayed on the record by Diana Ross,is herself a love child,and,besides not having a father at home,had to endure wearing rags to school and growing up in an "old,cold,run-down tenement slum." The background vocals echo this sentiment,asking the boyfriend to please "wait/wait won't you wait now/hold on/wait/just a little bit longer."
As was nearly always the case on singles released under the "Diana Ross &the Supremes" name,Supremes members Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong do not perform on the record;Motown session singers The Andantes performed the background vocals. All lead vocals were by Diana Ross,who would leave the group in a year for a solo career.
The public responded immediately to "Love Child" when it was released as a single on September 30,1968,reaching number one on Billboard's Hot 100 and becoming the third biggest selling Supremes' single behind "Baby Love" and "Someday We'll Be Together." The feat was repeated in Canada,where it also reached number one in the RPM 100 national singles chart. [8] In the UK singles chart,the record peaked at no. 15,and no. 3 in Australia. Given that the single spent a then lengthy 11 weeks in the Top Ten of Billboard's Hot 100 (the longest of any Supremes hit),its 1968 year-end ranking of 27 is low-seeming. But the ranking,which covers the period up to and including the issue dated December 14,1968,is based on only nine of its 16 weeks on the Hot 100 (and four of the unused seven weeks were spent in the Top Ten). The track's parent LP Love Child was released on November 13,1968.
Cash Box said that "Diana Ross clicks with a contemporary narrative message which (accompanied by up-tempo beat and pop arrangements) open up a new top forty image for the act." [9]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
All-time charts
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Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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United States | — | 2,000,000 [1] |
In 1992, World Industries released a skateboard video entitled Love Child. [37] The soundtrack for the video consisted entirely of music from the late 1960s era (unusual for a skateboard video); the featured segment with Daewon Song was set to "Love Child" and after that, "One Bad Apple" by The Osmonds. To this day Love Child is considered one of the best skateboard videos ever made.[ citation needed ]
Taken from the 1993 album 'Janet.', the 1994 single You Want This by Janet Jackson opens with a prominent sample of the first bar of Love Child
In 1996, a foreign version of the song known as "Halila", performed by the artist Laladin, was featured in the Demi Moore film Striptease .
In 2003, the song was featured prominently in The Wire episode "Backwash".
In 2010 Korean-born American professional skateboarder Daewon Song recreated the first part of his Love Child run trick-for-trick for a DVS Shoes promotional video. [38]
In 2016, "Love Child" was featured on the in-game radio in Mafia III . [39]
"Someday We'll Be Together" is a song written by Johnny Bristol, Jackey Beavers, and Harvey Fuqua. It was the last of twelve American number-one pop singles for Diana Ross & the Supremes on the Motown label. Although it was released as the final Supremes song featuring Diana Ross, who left the group for a solo career in January 1970, it was recorded as Ross' first solo single and Supremes members Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong do not sing on the recording. Both appear on the B-side, "He's My Sunny Boy".
"Stop! In the Name of Love" is a 1965 song recorded by the Supremes for the Motown label.
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"I'm Livin' in Shame" is a 1969 song released for Diana Ross & the Supremes on the Motown label. The sequel to the Supremes' number-one hit, "Love Child," the song peaked in the top ten on the US Billboard Hot 100 pop chart at #10 and the top 20 in the UK at #14 in April and May 1969.
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