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J5 Rock Songs

Hot_Street

Hot_Street

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The J5 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on May 6, 1997

Rock music is a broad genre with many different subgenres.
The J5 have recorded rock songs in the following subgenres:

- Hard Rock (State of Shock)
- Soft Rock (Let It Be; Bridge Over Troubled Water; Doctor, My Eyes)
- Classic Rock (I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore)
- Rock 'n' Roll (Rockin' Robin; Little Bitty Pretty One)
- Blues Rock (Stormy Monday)
- Roots Rock (Mama Told Me Not to Come)
- Folk Rock (Killing Me Softly With His Song)

Almost all of them are cover versions, with an emphasis on soft rock.
 
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I dunno.
  • Bridge Over Troubled Water
  • Feeling Alright
  • Walk On
  • Skywriter
  • I Am Love
  • Torture
I'm struggling. It's not something they're known for.
 
The cover of I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore from the American rock band The Rascals.
 
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There are also Let It Be and Rockin' Robin.
And the cover of Stormy Monday.
 
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Are Bridge Over Troubled Water and Let It Be actually rock songs?

Which brings me some question... what style is Make Tonight All Mine?
As many of their songs, I'd put it somewhere between bubblegum-pop and rock, so bubblegum-rock?
I guess their Get It Together/Dancing Machine/Moving Violation era has stuff that could be categorised as progressive rock.
(I am very very bad at categorising music. Especially generic pop and generic rock.)

If the Jacksons count as J5, is Art Of Madness a rock song?
 
The cover of the Roots rock song Mama Told Me Not to Come from Eric Burdon & the Animals.
 
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Hot_Street said:
The cover of the Roots rock song Mama Told Me Not to Come from Eric Burdon & the Animals. [...]
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Slightly off-topic but I'm gonna flag up the Three Dog Night 1970 version of 'Mama Told Me Not To Come' since Michael mentioned them twice (iirc) in interviews. Don't know if he really liked them (I hope so!) or if he was just told to say that by Motown.

Don't know if the Eric Burdon version was released as a single in the US (pretty sure that didn't happen, it wasn't released as a single in the UK, afaik) but the TDN version went No.1 in America.
 
The J5 covered one of the best rock songs of the 70s:

Jackson Browne, "Doctor My Eyes" (1972)​

Browne's first big single was unusual for the deeply introspective, typically first-person singer-songwriter. Thankfully, he welcomed outside input (from the label exec who suggested a more hopeful narrative to the vocal addendums from David Crosby and Graham Nash), and "Doctor My Eyes" jump started his career.
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ultimateclassicrock.com

Top 200 '70s Songs

Ultimate Classic Rock counts down the Top 200 '70s Songs
ultimateclassicrock.com ultimateclassicrock.com
 
Spaceship said:
"State of Shock" is probably their only song that would qualify as rock.
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Rock music is a broad genre with many different subgenres. The J5 have recorded rock songs in the following subgenres: Hard Rock (State of Shock), Soft Rock (Let It Be; Bridge Over Troubled Water; Doctor, My Eyes), Classic Rock (I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore), Rock 'n' Roll (Rockin' Robin; Little Bitty Pretty One), Blues Rock (Stormy Monday), Roots Rock (Mama Told Me Not to Come), Folk Rock (Killing Me Softly With His Song)
 
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Hot_Street said:
Rock music is a broad genre with many different subgenres. The J5 have recorded rock songs in the following subgenres: Hard Rock (State of Shock), Soft Rock (Bridge Over Troubled Water; Doctor, My Eyes), Classic Rock (I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore), Rock 'n' Roll (Rockin' Robin), Blues Rock (Stormy Monday), Roots Rock (Mama Told Me Not to Come), Folk Rock (Killing Me Softly With His Song)
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Most of those are just pop rock, at the very most.

"Rockin' Robin"? That was bubblegum lol
 
Spaceship said:
"Rockin' Robin"? That was bubblegum lol
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As Jerry Marcellino noted, “Rockin’ Robin” was the Motown star’s take on an earlier rock ’n’ roll hit by Bobby Day, when it was known as “Rock-in’ Robin.”
classic.motown.com

Michael Jackson “Rockin’ Robin” | Classic Motown

Released as a single (Motown 1191) on Thursday, February 17, 1972. “I had grown up hearing that song by Bobby Day,” record producer Jerry Marcellino recalled in the liner notes of The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 12A: 1972. “And it was a natural for little Michael Jackson.” Who else, asked...
classic.motown.com classic.motown.com

Little Bitty Pretty One is also Rock 'n' Roll.
Motown’s Marcellino and Mel Larson evidently liked reaching back in time: they produced an updated version of “Little Bitty Pretty One” for the Jackson 5’s album Lookin’ Through The Windows.
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classic.motown.com

Michael Jackson “Rockin’ Robin” | Classic Motown

Released as a single (Motown 1191) on Thursday, February 17, 1972. “I had grown up hearing that song by Bobby Day,” record producer Jerry Marcellino recalled in the liner notes of The Complete Motown Singles Vol. 12A: 1972. “And it was a natural for little Michael Jackson.” Who else, asked...
classic.motown.com classic.motown.com
 
Hot_Street said:
As Jerry Marcellino noted, “Rockin’ Robin” was the Motown star’s take on an earlier rock ’n’ roll hit by Bobby Day, when it was known as “Rock-in’ Robin.”
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They took a rock song and turned it into a bubblegum pop song.
Hot_Street said:
Little Bitty Pretty One is also Rock 'n' Roll.
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Nah, maybe it's pop rock, but specifically bubblegum pop rock.

Not genuine rock.
 
Spaceship said:
They took a rock song and turned it into a bubblegum pop song.

Nah, maybe it's pop rock, but specifically bubblegum pop rock.

Not genuine rock.
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The term bubble gum pop devalues the Jackson 5's versions and does not do justice to their achievement.
 
Hot_Street said:
The term bubble gum pop devalues the Jackson 5's versions and does not do justice to their achievement.
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J5 were a bubblegum pop group for most of their run at Motown. Nearly all of their songs were written and produced by Motown's team for children. That's understandable considering how young they were, but their music still wasn't anything special. It wasn't until after they left Motown and changed their name to the Jacksons that they started making wholly good music. Even then, however, their first two albums as the Jacksons weren't very good; they were mostly just riding the Philly soul wave and doing nothing to make themselves stand out. Destiny and Triumph are their only good albums; this is largely because they had significantly more creative control on their music than they did before.
 
Any of the albums before Destiny are boring as hell to sit through lol

MJ was always talented, but it wasn't until he grew up that he truly became a legend.
 
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Hot_Street said:
Rock music is a broad genre with many different subgenres. The J5 have recorded rock songs in the following subgenres: Hard Rock (State of Shock), Soft Rock (Let It Be; Bridge Over Troubled Water; Doctor, My Eyes), Classic Rock (I Ain't Gonna Eat Out My Heart Anymore), Rock 'n' Roll (Rockin' Robin; Little Bitty Pretty One), Blues Rock (Stormy Monday), Roots Rock (Mama Told Me Not to Come), Folk Rock (Killing Me Softly With His Song)
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Just because a song starts out as something does not mean the remake is the same thing. Like this:
 
Spaceship said:
Nearly all of their songs were written and produced by Motown's team for children.
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Motown didn't have a team for children, because they didn't have many kid acts. Very few Jackson 5 songs (plus the solo Mike & Jermaine albums) were youth based like ABC. Many of the songs on their albums were remakes originally released by adult acts. On their debut album, only 3 of 12 songs were original to the J5, and one of those was a rerecording of a song they had first released on Steeltown. So technically 2 songs were new. Even with some of the songs written especially for the brothers, Motown had their adult acts record them. Because Motown always had multiple acts record the same tracks during that time. Who's Lovin' You had already been recorded by several Motown acts before the J5 did it.
 
Not reading that pointless wall of text, but Motown wrote and produced J5's music for children. Even if the songs were already written before, Motown produced and marketed them for kids.

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