Originally Posted by
BayouMotownMan
To me Now The Bitter is the weakest song on an otherwise mediocre album. It seemed to just plod along with extended instrumentations and my thought at first hearing it was just that Smokey was going psychedelic three years too late. A single? I did an edit of it and it didn't work then and wouldn't now.
The entire Floy Joy lp strikes me as a budget release. Supposedly the last or one of the last Motown lps featuring the Funk Bros. Marv Tarplin's guitar is featured everywhere but unlike most Motown releases of its time, the selections were not fleshed out with the Detroit Symphony, the strings, the woodwinds, etc. Smokey did this with one of his last Miracles singles, the glorious "Satisfaction" just before this lp was thrown together...and it does sound thrown together. Jean could have been great on "Satisfaction."
Tracks like Automatically Sunshine and A Heart Like Mine could have benefited from the Detroit strings
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