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The Supremes’ Stop! In the Name of Love was written and produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland and recorded at Hitsville’s Studio A, the room called the Snake Pit, on January 5, 7 and 11, 1965. The Funk Brothers lineup included Johnny Griffith on organ, Joe Messina on guitar, James Jamerson on bass and Benny Benjamin on drums, with Jack Ashford’s vibraphone and Mike Terry’s baritone sax bracketing the high and low ends for AM radio. Behind Diana Ross, Florence Ballard and Mary Wilson, the chorus was thickened by the largely uncredited Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow and Louvain Demps.

Released February 8 with I’m in Love Again on the B-side, the song got its national TV debut on ABC’s Shindig on February 24, 1965, introducing the hand-out stop gesture. It held number one on the Billboard Hot 100 for two weeks and charted in Canada, Germany, Luxembourg, the UK and beyond. At the 1966 Grammys it lost best contemporary rock and roll group vocal performance to the Statler Brothers’ Flowers on the Wall. The Recording Academy later inducted the recording into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001.

• Cash Box called it a rousing, shuffling pop blues romancer, and Record World described the group as unstoppable.
• It reached number 3 in Canada and Germany, number 4 in Luxembourg and number 7 in the UK, and later earned gold in the US and silver in the UK.
• The Isley Brothers covered it on This Old Heart of Mine in 1966.
• The Hollies’ 1983 version reached number 29 in the US, and Barbara Dickson’s version charted in Belgium.
• Glee mashed it up with En Vogue’s Free Your Mind, and Rolling Stone ranked it number 254 of the 500 greatest songs in 2021.