Diana Ross

The Supremes' first No. 1, arriving after three years of obscurity. It was the starting point at which Ross's understated tone became the face of the group.

• In the intro, stomping feet and handclaps count off the beat in place of drums. Accounts say it was recorded by laying wooden boards on the studio floor and stepping on them.
• Recorded in a low key suited to Mary Wilson's range, it has Ross singing without force in a breathy lower register. That whispery, understated tone became the Supremes' signature expression from then on.
• Wilson and Ballard's backing vocals answer each line of the lead with a short reply, a back-and-forth (call and response) that gives the simple song a sense of rhythm.
• The thick, low baritone saxophone in the instrumental break contrasts with the light vocals and lends the song weight.

Sitting at the peak of five straight No. 1s, the song is also the performance in which Motown-style choreography training survives most vividly.

• An intro of organ chords ringing like an alarm creates a stop-in-your-tracks tension from the very first beat.
• The chorus move of thrusting a palm forward became the most famous gesture of their television appearances. Paul Williams of the Temptations is said to have helped work out the moves.
• The relentlessly driving bass and tambourine of the Funk Brothers, Motown's house musicians, turn a pleading lyric into a dance number.
• Ross's vocal swings between plea and warning. Pushing forward with crisp diction rather than belting high was the group's signature at the time.

Ross's first No. 1 alone, in the first year after leaving the group. Turning a breezy duet original into a drama of monologue and chorus, it announced Ross's start as a solo artist.

• It opens quietly with strings and low piano, and Ross begins the story with a passage recited rather than sung (spoken word).
• The album version, over 6 minutes long, keeps postponing the climax, layering strings and chorus, until late on it erupts into a church-choir chorus (gospel-style).
• Heard side by side with the brisk original by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell, it reveals how differently Ashford & Simpson rebuilt the same song.
• Gordy is said to have disliked the long recitation, but once radio DJs started playing the album version, an edited single was released.

From the years when Ross's name as an actor was growing, this is the song that plunged straight into the disco current. Within a single track, a ballad gives way to a dance tune.

• The opening is a slow ballad. Ross sings in a breathy near-whisper, floating the high notes lightly.
• Around 2 minutes 40 seconds in, bass and hi-hat (the cymbal that chops the beat into fine pieces) come in, and the whole song flips into a dance track. That transition is the heart of the song.
• In the latter part of the album version, which runs over 7 minutes, Ross's improvised interjections and laughter mix in, so that it sounds less like a structured recording than a moment in a club.
• Producer Hal Davis is said to have dimmed the studio lights and dressed the room like a club to set the mood for the session.

The first single from “Diana,” the album she made with Chic, it spent four weeks at number one. The recording emerged from a tug-of-war between the producers and the singer over the mix.

• Bernard Edwards's thick, bouncing bass forms the backbone of the song from start to finish.
• Nile Rodgers's rhythm guitar, its strings scratched in short, choked strokes (the “chicken scratch” technique), fills the gaps between the bass lines and sets the body moving.
• The arrangement, with strings stabbing in short and sharp in the high register, is something like Chic's signature sound.
• Ross lays the rapid tumble of syllables on lightly, without forcing. It is also worth listening for how the vocal sits forward in the remixed version.

Rodgers recalled that the song came to him after he saw performers dressed as Ross at a New York club. For Ross, on the verge of leaving Motown to stand on her own, it became a song that sounded like a personal declaration.

• The intro, with brass ringing out like a fanfare, is entrance music in its purest form. For years afterward, Ross opened her concerts with this song.
• The trombone solo in the interlude was played by Meco Monardo, known for his disco arrangement of “Star Wars.”
• Its spirit of refusing to hide oneself, of showing who you are, made it an anthem of the LGBTQ community.
• In 1997 the Notorious B.I.G.'s “Mo Money Mo Problems” sampled the song, bringing it back to the ears of a new generation.

Written for Ross by the Gibb brothers of the Bee Gees, the song was built as a tribute to the Motown sound of her Supremes days. It reached number one on the British chart the following year.

• Its texture, with handclaps, tambourine and bright brass, deliberately revives the feel of 1960s Motown recordings.
• The Gibb brothers' high falsetto chorus supports her from behind, producing a sound in which the Bee Gees and Motown meet within a single song.
• With each return of the chorus, a modulation (key change) raises the pitch center a step, keeping the giddy mood alive to the very end.
• In the music video, a black-and-white re-creation of a 1960s television music show, Ross takes the stage as if playing her own Supremes-era self.