Agreed to a point. The J5 factor in, but again, if Motown was hellbent on the Jean Supremes staying on top, there would have been a push to do something groundbreaking when "Touch" failed to make it. Switching them to Smokey just doesn't seem to be the big idea that it might have seemed at the time. And I'm on record with my love of the FJ album. I just don't think Smokey was the right pairing for something truly noteworthy.
One issue that I think the group faced was where they were vs the J5. The Supremes were teenagers when half the J5 was born. These new Supremes came across more sophisticated than youthful, and I think Jean was a big part of that. Diana always had this "childlike" exuberance to her onstage persona that made even DRATS, with all of it's glitz and glamour, and the fact that Cindy was old as dirt [[joke), still give off an air of youth. Jean was all woman. She was built like a woman, she carried herself with extreme regalness. Her facial expressions, her movements while performing: she was a Queen.
The trick would've been pairing this new, more adult Supremes with material that would transcend ages. They needed music that was going to capture the J5 crowd as well as the Roberta Flack crowd. The Jean Supremes probably hung on as long as they did because they held a certain appeal for the adult audience, but dropped off because they lacked the appeal to the youth crowd. Motown could've done more to bridge this gap. Frank may have been tapped out. Smokey really wasn't the answer.
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