Listening today to "I Guess I'll Always Love You" and I thought, what a wasted masterpiece. What on earth happened to the Isley Brothers at Motown? They came out of the gate strong with one of the best records by any Motown artist, "This Old Heart of Mine," a song universally lauded and discussed in music magazine articles. But then, Motown did an odd thing; they followed up a trendsetter, a break from the past with a song that was exactly a return to the past: "Take Some Time Out for Love," which went nowhere. Then came the record that sounded like IT was supposed to follow the trendsetting "This Old Heart"- "I Guess I'll Always Love You." Apparently, either the momentum of the Isleys' career was lost with just one misfire -OR- Motown was satisfied that they proved they could get a hit on an artist that wasn't a homegrown creation and just left the subsequent records to fend for themselves.

Either way, I never understood why Motown would follow up something that gave the Isleys a fresh, updated sound with a record, even though nice, was a huge throwback in style and sound. "I Guess I'll Always Love You" was such a a breathtaking record and sounds as if it was an upward progression of "This Old Heart." But hardly anyone in the listening public cared about the record. After this, the records just progressively did worse on the charts until, thankfully, the brothers broke from Motown to do something completely new.