It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)” by the Four Tops

June 30, 1965
“I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch” by the Four Tops
#1 on the Billboard Hot Rhythm and Blues Singles chart, June 5 – August 6, 1965

One of the things that allowed Motown to conquer the ’60s R&B market — and pop radio — was the sheer concentration of talent, both on the marquee and behind the scenes. Of all the songwriters, producers, and arrangers who helped craft some of the label’s biggest hits, perhaps the best-known and most celebrated is the team of Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Eddie Holland. As Holland-Dozier-Holland, the trio is nearly as familiar among music fans as the artists they helped make famous. The three earned their big break by turning a notoriously non-starting girl group, nicknamed the “no-hit Supremes,” into the biggest pop group in America, thanks to a string of #1 hits including “Where Did Our Love Go,” “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me,” and “Stop! in the Name of Love.”

Having succeeded in turning the Supremes’ fortunes around, Holland-Dozier-Holland tried to repeat the trick with a male vocal group also relegated to Motown’s B-list. The Four Tops had been together nearly a decade before signing to Motown in 1963, having passed through a series of labels and toured regularly with no breakout success. Their lite-jazz material set them apart from the label’s star acts, and Berry Gordy seemingly found them more useful as backing singers than as hitmakers in their own right. That changed in 1964 when Holland-Dozier-Holland selected the group to lay down vocals for a backing track they had recorded. The resulting record, “Baby I Need Your Loving,” introduced the new R&B-influenced Four Tops style to the world, featuring baritone lead singer Levi Stubbs pushing against the top of his vocal range.

The single just missed the Top 10, but it proved the group had a certain spark that had previously been overlooked. This promise would be confirmed when the Four Tops earned their first #1 hit the following year, the abundantly titled “I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch).” The song topped the pop charts for two weeks, replacing the Supremes’ “Back in My Arms Again” to become Motown’s first pair of back-to-back pop hits. “I Can’t Help Myself” ruled the Billboard R&B charts for two whole months, becoming the definitive song of the summer, and finished 1965 as the second-biggest pop hit of the year (after “Wooly Bully” by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dhqJG4qSu0

Like “Baby I Need Your Loving” before it, “I Can’t Help Myself” is a song that is steeped so deeply in romance that love seems like a burden the afflicted is forced to suffer. Stubbs’ anguish-soaked voice punches through the bouncy, upbeat arrangement, as if trying to drown out the typical pop-song version of love with the truth about how painful it feels. Even as he mourns the fact that he’s “weaker than a man should be” and “tied to your apron strings,” however, the swell of the strings and the jangle of the tambourine betray the rush of exhilaration he’s so desperate to tamp down. That the other three Tops cheerfully pulse through the song seemingly unfazed by Stubbs’ theatrical soul-rending just adds to the charm of the song and to the sense that love will inevitably defy anyone who tries to resist.

As terrific as “I Can’t Help Myself” is at capturing the mixed emotions of love, however, Holland-Dozier-Holland’s productions for the Tops would only get even better. As per the trio’s usual MO, the team reinforced the big hit with a soundalike follow-up. (“I Can’t Help Myself” itself borrowed heavily from “Where Did Our Love Go,” including a suspiciously similar chord progression.) While it’s common for artists and songwriters to try to replicate past successes, Holland-Dozier-Holland had a knack of turning out would-be knockoffs that were at least the equal of the original. Despite boasting a nearly identical arrangement and a begging-for-it title, “It’s the Same Old Song” somehow managed to improve on “I Can’t Help Myself” and chart nearly as well (#2 R&B, #5 pop). It would take until the following year, however, for the Four Tops and Holland-Dozier-Holland to discover their true destiny together, cranking up the angst factor and crafting some of the finest examples of pop melodrama every recorded.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.

Sally O'Rourke

Sally O’Rourke works in an office and sometimes writes about music. She blogs about every song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100 (in order) at No Hard Chords. She has also contributed to The Singles Jukebox, One Week // One Band, and PopMatters. Special interests include girl groups, soul pop, and over-analyzing chord changes and lyrics as if deciphering a secret code. She was born in Baton Rouge and lives in Manhattan. Her favorite Nugget is “Liar, Liar” by The Castaways.