Single:
Love Child entered the Australian singles chart* on 9 November 1968 and peaked at #2. The song was #19 on the Top 100 of 1968.
Album:
The song is on Love Child which entered the Australian albums chart* on 15 March 1969 and peaked at #13.
Songwriters:
R. Dean Taylor, Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer, Deke Richards
Producers:
The Clan (R. Dean Taylor, Frank Wilson, Pam Sawyer, Deke Richards) and Henry Cosby
Record label of Australian release:
Tamla Motown
The video:
The Supremes debuted Love Child on the season premiere of the CBS variety program The Ed Sullivan Show in September 1968.
*Kent Music Report / Australian Chart Book. See About.
Wikipedia:
The song is 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.”
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Child_(song)
Songfacts:
Neither founder member Mary Wilson nor more recent addition Cindy Birdsong (replacing Florence Ballard) sang a note on this single. The test run with Motown session group The Andantes as backup singers was issued as the single. Mary claims that this was a move by Berry Gordy to make clear to her and Cindy that they were expendable and further establish his power over them as well as playing up to his protégé/lover Diana Ross. Mary further says that the miming to the number for The Ed Sullivan Show was particularly difficult, knowing she didn’t sing on it.
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/the-supremes/love-child
Lyrics:
Tenement slum
Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh
Ahh!
You think that I don′t feel love
But what I feel for you is real love
In other’s eyes I see reflected
A hurt, scorned, rejected
Click for full lyrics
This song is also on our Spotify playlist Bang a Gong – the 60s
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