Item: Depend On Me (The Early Albums)
Rating: 8
Author: rollingstone

8.0/ 10

“The Miracles were the first Motown act to score a Top Five single, "Shop Around," in 1960, and the first to issue an album, 1961's Hi, We're the Miracles. They also came with their own one-man hit factory: Earth-angel tenor William "Smokey" Robinson wrote or co-wrote nearly every one of the songs on these two […]”

The Miracles were the first Motown act to score a Top Five single, "Shop Around," in 1960, and the first to issue an album, 1961's Hi, We're the Miracles. They also came with their own one-man hit factory: Earth-angel tenor William "Smokey" Robinson wrote or co-wrote nearly every one of the songs on these two CDs, which manage to pack in five early-Sixties LPs. The singing and rhythms in the gorgeous "(You Can) Depend on Me" and the 1962 classic "You've Really Got a Hold on Me" are still steeped in Fifties doo-wop. But Robinson was already working toward his later-Sixties Midas touch with the rippled-harp silk of "I'll Try Something New" and the saucy-gallop B side "Mighty Good Lovin'."