Diva Canon #7: DIANA ROSS

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

DIANA FACTS:

Her middle name is 'Ernestine'.

She used to sh4g Gene Simmons out of KISS.

She once served a two-day jail sentence.

She is actually a MERMAID hence the fishtail dresses.

The original diva (if you don't count Marie Antoinette) made sure she had a separate credit on pretty much every song she appeared on for maximum importance. As such, I have only included singles where Diana is named separately. I nearly made this a smaller, Supremes-only poll, but the whole point of canonizing is to weed the wheat from the chaff, and there's certainly a lot of chaff down here. EIGHTEEN ticks? Ndoobedoobedoo!

[Poll #879379]

Comments

[koganbot]

Amazed how many I don't recall by name, though in some ways this isn't surprising since I managed not to know a good deal of the Seventies Top 40, being alienated from the culture and all. But as I said in the box question, I have a very strange nonreaction to/nonopinion of Diana Ross, given her diva-dom and given the fact that I put FOUR of her songs in the all-time Top 100 I did for Radio On in '92 (I'd put an upper limit of three per artist for everyone but James Brown, but she counted twice for the Supremes and for herself). I love some of her music while not caring one way or another that she's the one who's doing it. So I'm not hearing her music as part of her story (even though of course it is). Maybe if I'd ticked "It's My Turn" I'd feel differently.

Anyway, the four that made my all-time hundred are "Where Did Our Love Go," "You Keep Me Hangin' On," "Love Hangover," and "Swept Away" - the last of which is a great great great Arthur Baker production, extremely sexy but also an intense everything breaking loose dance rave-up, the sort of thing Baker did a couple of times with his wife Tina B and that Lewis Martinée specialized in with Exposé and Sequel. Which is to say that I'd probably like the track just as much with any old disco backup singer standing forth and singing lead (which isn't to say that Diana doesn't do a fine job but that it's just irrelevant to me that she's the one doing it). "Love Hangover" is as anonymous to me as "Ring My Bell" - anonymous in the good sense, meaning that what I'm hearing in the song is Diana Singing the sound of all those yearning back-up singers and one-off girls and scenesters and hos on Sunset that Donna Summer sang about.

As for her peaking with Chic, I don't agree (Rodgers and Edwards are slightly overrated, though I like them quite well). Of my four top tracks, two are written and produced by Holland Dozier Holland, "Love Hangover" is written by Pam Sawyer and Marilyn McLeod and produced by Hal Davis, "Swept Away" is by Arthur Baker. My next favorite solo track, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," is written and produced by Ashford & Simpson.

It Doesn't Matter 'Cause Nothing Lasts Forever

[koganbot]

Here's the "Swept Away" vid on YouTube, though the sound dub is atrocious.