Four for Four: The Jackson 5 Own 1970
Consider what a new act usually gets. One single that scrapes the lower reaches of the Hot 100, maybe a second that does a little better, and then, if the label is patient and the songs are there, something that finally cracks the top ten. That's the normal shape of a career. It ramps. The Jackson 5 skipped the ramp. Their first four singles in this archive all went to #1, one after another, inside a single year, and the details of how it played out week by week are even stranger than the headline.
The band was five brothers from Gary, Indiana, drilled by their father and signed to Motown, where Berry Gordy put the whole machine behind them. The lead singer was about eleven years old. I keep coming back to that. The voice on "I Want You Back" belongs to a child, and the record doesn't sound like a novelty for one second. It sounds like the future arriving early.
One Week in January
"I Want You Back" entered the Hot 100 on November 15, 1969 and took its time. It climbed through the holidays while B.J. Thomas's "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head" sat at the top for four weeks, the easygoing sound of a country that had just come through the sixties and wanted something soft to land on. Then, on the chart dated January 31, 1970, the Jacksons took over. That tumbling piano, that bass line, Michael out front sounding like he'd been doing this for decades, and the new decade had its first real jolt.
It lasted exactly one week. The next chart handed #1 to "Venus" by the Shocking Blue, and after that came Sly & the Family Stone for two weeks and then Simon & Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Water," which parked itself at the top for six. On paper that's a modest opening: one week, then gone. But "I Want You Back" hung around the Hot 100 for 19 weeks in all, the longest chart life of any of the four, and Motown had already learned the lesson that mattered. The kids could do this. The only question was how fast the next one could be ready.
Taking It From the Beatles, Twice
The answer was six weeks. "ABC" debuted on March 14, 1970, while "Bridge Over Troubled Water" was still ruling, and it reached #1 on April 25, 1970. Look at what it replaced. The record it knocked off the top was "Let It Be," which had spent the previous two weeks at #1. The Beatles were coming apart in public that spring, and their farewell hymn got bumped by a bunch of kids spelling out the alphabet over a bass line. I don't want to make too much of a coincidence, but I don't want to make too little of it either. Something was changing hands.
"ABC" held for two weeks, through May 2, before the Guess Who's "American Woman" moved in for three. Then it happened again. "The Love You Save," which debuted on May 30, went to #1 on June 27, 1970, and the record it displaced was "The Long and Winding Road," the Beatles' second and last #1 of that year. Twice in one spring and summer, the Jackson 5 took the top spot directly from the biggest band in the world as it walked out the door. Two weeks at #1 again, through the Fourth of July, and then Three Dog Night's "Mama Told Me (Not to Come)" took over.
Three singles, three #1s, five weeks on top combined, and all of it done before the summer was half over. The songs were of a piece: bright, fast, built on the same tumbling bass figures and call-and-response, Michael out front and his brothers piling in behind him. Motown had found a formula and, to its credit, had the sense not to mess with it. Yet.
Five Weeks in the Fall
Then it did mess with it, and that's the record I'd take to a desert island. "I'll Be There" was a ballad. No alphabet, no tumbling bass, just a slow, aching promise sung by a boy who couldn't possibly have understood the words yet and sang them like he'd lived every one. It entered the chart on September 19, 1970, the same week Diana Ross's "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" began a three-week stay at #1. Neil Diamond's "Cracklin' Rosie" slipped in for one week after that, and then on October 17, 1970, the Jackson 5 were on top for the fourth time in a year.
This time they stayed. Five straight weeks, October 17 through November 14, 1970, as many as the first three #1s put together. It was the fall of 1970, the Beatles were gone, and the biggest record in the country was a ballad fronted by a boy who had only just turned twelve. When it finally gave way, on November 21, 1970, the record that took over was "I Think I Love You" by the Partridge Family, a made-for-television family band. Pop had noticed what the Jacksons were selling and was already manufacturing its own version.
Add it up. Four singles, four #1s, ten weeks at the top in a single calendar year. Motown had a remarkable 1970 across the board: Edwin Starr's "War" ran three weeks in late summer, Diana Ross had her three in September, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles closed the year out with "The Tears of a Clown" in December. But the Jacksons were the story. They were on top in January, April, June, and October. Pick a season, any season, and they were either at #1 or about to be.
The Streak Ends, and Something Else Begins
Streaks end. "Mama's Pearl," which debuted on January 30, 1971, stalled at #2. So did "Never Can Say Goodbye," a gorgeous record that entered the chart on April 3, 1971, and spent 12 weeks on it without getting past the runner-up spot. Two #2s in a row would be a career for most acts. After 1970 it read like a slump. That's the trap the Jackson 5 had built for themselves: perfection as a starting point, with nowhere to go but slightly down.
And then a new name starts showing up in the listings. "Got to Be There," credited to Michael Jackson alone, debuted on October 30, 1971, and climbed to #4. "Rockin' Robin" followed in March 1972 and went to #2. "I Wanna Be Where You Are" made #16 that May. The group kept releasing records through all of this, and for a while the two lines run side by side, "Little Bitty Pretty One" and "Lookin' Through the Windows" for the brothers, the solo singles for the youngest one. You can see the split forming right there in the chart entries, not as a betrayal, just as arithmetic. The solo records were peaking higher.
On October 14, 1972, "Ben" reached #1 for a single week, wedged between Mac Davis's "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me" and Chuck Berry's "My Ding-A-Ling." A tender ballad written for a movie about a rat, sung by a fourteen-year-old, and the kid took it to the top of the Hot 100 on his own. Two years and change after "I Want You Back," Michael Jackson had his first #1 without his brothers on the label. What he did with that a decade later is another story, and it's told elsewhere on this site.
But 1970 is the year I keep returning to. Ten weeks at #1, four for four, a lead singer years away from a driver's license. The Beatles left the top of the chart twice that year, and both times it was five brothers from Gary who were waiting to take it. Careers aren't supposed to start at the summit. This one did, and the chart has the receipts.
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