Quote Originally Posted by BayouMotownMan View Post
Why did Touch bomb so badly?

Many feel that the Supremes had been besting Ross on several occasions except for Ain't No Mountain High Enough. Here lately, Diana's Reach Out I'll Be There tanked while Nathan Jones was surpassing it on every chart. Gordy could not let The Supremes minus Ross get this much success while he was struggling to launch her solo career. Little promotion was given to Touch.

Floy Joy did better because Ross was not recording. Unfortunately the Jimmy Webb lp was released at the same time as Lady Sings and everything was riding on the success of that movie and soundtrack, so no promotion was afforded to that lp either.

Just my opinion. But Imagine if Nathan Jones and the Touch lp had been massive hits while Diana floundered with Reach Out, Surrender and the lp, all three of which did poorly. It would have made establishing her as the next Streisand all that much harder.
what's so interesting with the first few albums is the fact that motown didn't completely drop all investment. Right On had the tear-away poster, Mag 7 and NW had gatefold covers with diecuts [[even if the lazy marketing dept ended up doing nothing of interest inside the gatefold) and Touch was released with a promotional radio interview album.

in contrast, look at the shoddy and unimaginative albums for MRATV, the Marvelettes [[with the terrible In Full Bloom album art), even the Four Tops weren't afforded much with Still Water or the other Frank Wilson albums.

As for NJ, i think was a good song but not as perfect as it could be. several different fans on here have brought up comments that i think sum it up very well. 1) the unison singing makes the lyrics [[which are a bit challenging to begin with) hard to decipher 2) after the bridge the song doesn't continue to build and climax in a big finish. Jean does a handful of ad libs but not enough. there are some of the synthesizer effects but again, not enough. If they'd trimmed down the unison singing just a little, here and there and just bumped up the ending, i think it would have easily gone top 10. it starts out marvelously but just doesn't quite deliver