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BBC Four

BBC 4

Sings Motown

BBC Four HD

Sasha Duncan

Mark Cooper

... Sings Motown

Music: Classic Pop & Rock

Music: Soul & Reggae: Soul

27/03/2015

BBC Four - ... Sings MotownSearch BBC

With Roberta Flack, Dusty Springfield, The Flying Lizards, Kim Wilde and Robert Palmer.

Compilation of Motown covers featuring Paul Weller and Amy Winehouse, Roberta Flack, Dusty Springfield, The Flying Lizards, Kim Wilde, Robert Palmer, Mariah Carey and Phil Collins.

Archive compilation celebrating the incredible body of work by Detroit's finest songwriting teams and artists for perhaps America's greatest ever record label, Motown.

This compilation of Motown covers spans the 1960s to the present day and features: Paul Weller and Amy Winehouse with I Heard It Through the Grapevine on Jools's Hootenanny, Roberta Flack's version of Stevie Wonder's Never Dreamed You'd Leave in Summer from an early edition of the OGWT, early adopter Dusty Springfield with Nowhere to Run on her 60s BBC TV show and The Flying Lizards with Barrett Strong's Money (That's What I Want) from Top of the Pops in 1979. 

Of course, there are quite a few 80s hit covers from the decade that rediscovered Motown as a hitmaking machine, many of them from Top of the Pops including Kim Wilde's You Keep Me Hangin' On and Paul Young's 1983 Number 1 with Marvin Gaye's 1962 B-side, Wherever I Lay My Hat. 

Then it's on into the 90s with Mercy Mercy Me from the late lamented Robert Palmer and Mariah Carey's take on The Jackson Five's I'll Be There. Plus of course, Phil Collins but, rightly or wrongly, not with You Can't Hurry Love but with his 21st-century reading of Stevie Wonder's Blame It on the Sun from Later with Jools.

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