Diana Ross - The supreme diva

It's easy to call someone a diva these days. But try doing it in the 1960s, growing up in a Black ghetto in Detroit, in a middle-class family with no artistic ambitions whatsoever. And indeed, Diane Ernestine Earle Ross never gave it a thought. The young "Diana" - the result of a clerical error by her mother at the registry office - actually dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, training as a seamstress while attending Cass Technical High School. And yet, to paraphrase one of her most famous songs, there are no mountains high enough that this indomitable iron woman hasn't managed to climb over the course of her career spanning more than fifty years. A hundred million records sold, the absolute record for US number-one hits (18), twelve Grammys, an Oscar nomination, awards and honors of every kind, including two stars on the Walk of Fame (the only woman to have two) and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, awarded to her by Obama in 2016. A cursus honorum sealed first by the title of "most successful female artist of all time" from the Guinness Book of Records (1993), and later by Billboard's "Entertainer of the Century" award.

Diana Ross is the first diva of black music, the forerunner of pop's women-managers, and the one who, better than anyone else, has known how to handle stardom without ever selling herself short or resorting to cheap gimmicks. The supreme diva, in short, capable of giving the term a positive meaning, freeing it from all its tired clichés. Without her, the multitudes of soul and R&B starlets of recent decades are simply inconceivable.

My dream was to make Diana Ross the biggest star in the world.

(Berry Gordy)

Baby, even the losers… The man of providence

But let's get back to the aspiring seamstress from Michigan. Diana (Detroit, March 26, 1944), daughter of Ernestine, a teacher, and Fred, a former US Army serviceman, holds on tight to the name mistakenly recorded on her birth certificate, to the point of using it as her stage name for her entire artistic career. In the family, though, they call her Diane.

Her adolescence is far from easy, not least because of her parents' early separation. After studying design with the intention of becoming a fashion designer at Cass Technical High School in her hometown, graduating in 1962 (half a year ahead of her classmates), Diana makes ends meet working the register at Huston department store, the first Black employee there. Still, she doesn't escape the cliché of the good Black girl who starts out singing in a church (Baptist) gospel choir. Nature has gifted her with a shimmering soprano voice that, at just fifteen, catches the attention of Milton Jenkins, producer of the Primes (later The Temptations), who's looking for a group of backing singers for his protégés. It's actually a member of the Temptations, Paul Williams, who convinces Diana to join this all-female group, soon nicknamed the Primettes, which already included the very young Florence Ballard, Mary Wilson and Betty McGlow. Diana also puts her studies to use for the group, taking care of hairstyling, make-up and costumes.

But it's another man who changes her life. A failed ex-boxer, a Korean War veteran, the guy has a past as a pimp with too soft a heart ("I just couldn't bring myself to beat the prostitutes," he'll later recall), a marriage in ruins, and three kids to support. Not exactly the profile you'd picture for the man destined to build the greatest empire in the history of Black music…

Mr. Berry Gordy Jr. is such a loser that he even managed to run into the ground the jazz record store he'd opened in Detroit. Turns out the young people of the Motor City prefer other kinds of Black music — rhythm 'n' blues, for instance. Gordy, however, is disgusted by the white monopoly over Black music. So he decides to try and get his hands on it himself. Him, of all people, with that born-loser pedigree.

He starts out as a songwriter, scoring a few decent hits (most notably Jackie Wilson's "Reet Petite" and "Lonely Teardrops"). Then he decides to try his luck as a producer, launching The Miracles and, above all, setting up his own record label, Tamla Records. All it takes is 800 dollars borrowed from his family. After two Marv Johnson songs ("Come To Me" and "You Got What It Takes"), the new Motown debuts with the Miracles' "Bad Girl". That same year the two labels are merged into Motown Records (short for "Motor Town", Detroit's nickname). It's the beginning of one of the most thrilling stories of musical entrepreneurship of all time.

I wanted to take Black kids off the streets, having them walk in one door as unknowns and out the other as stars.

(Berry Gordy)

Gordy goes hunting for talent in the streets of Black ghettos, inside Baptist churches, among gospel choirs. "I wanted them to walk in one door as unknowns and out the other as stars," he'll confide. His plan is to produce Black music made and controlled by Black people, but aimed at white audiences too. Mainstream music, melodic and catchy, built on the sacred dogmas of the hook and the groove. And too bad if some Black purists take it the wrong way. "Crossing over" is the magic formula. A formula that fits Diana Ross's svelte silhouette like a glove. Among the crowd of artists filling the offices on West Grand Boulevard, under the banner of "The Sound of Young America", the future diva's flowing hair and dazzling smile immediately stand out. All that's left for the boss to do is plan her rise. Because deep down he already knew how it would end: "My dream," he would later reveal, "was to make Diana the biggest star in the world".

By 1961 Ross is already first among equals within the Supremes, as the Primettes had been renamed, with Barbara Martin having stepped in for the departing McGlow (not exactly her most far-sighted move). On January 15, 1962 the quartet signs a contract with Motown, and Gordy is ready to make them his favorite creation, leading vocalist included. A manufactured group? Maybe, but who cares? From here on, after all, nothing will be out of reach for the man who couldn't even manage to be a decent pimp — including summoning Martin Luther King to Detroit to offer him a record deal (for a 45 featuring the legendary "I Have A Dream" and an album titled "The Great March To Freedom").

Of this dazzling Motown musical epic, Diana will be both a privileged beneficiary and, at the same time, its most successful architect, thanks to her regal stage presence, her flawless intonation and her lyrical soprano tempered by soul.

For every artist we need to produce nothing short of Top Ten material, and since the Supremes have a bigger following, for them we will only produce number-one records.

(Memo circulated at Motown's offices, 1965)

The world's love story with three girls

The first shot, though, fires blanks. The LP Meet The Supremes, which collects eleven tracks written mostly by Gordy himself and Smokey Robinson, fails to make a dent in the charts. None of the singles pulled from it ("I Want A Guy", "Buttered Popcorn", "Your Heart Belongs To Me" and "Let Me Go The Right Way") reaches the Billboard Top 40, despite a potential, highly sentimental icebreaker like "Your Heart Belongs To Me" and other successful numbers such as "Who's Lovin' You", with Diana's bluesy vocal runs, the soft "Baby Don't Go", carried home by Wilson over a very '50s melodic pattern (in similar territory is the doo-wop of "Never Again"), and the edgier "Buttered Popcorn", entrusted to Ballard's voice, who also takes the lead on the euphoric "Let Me Go The Right Way". The tracklist also includes one of the Marvelettes' earliest recordings, "I Want A Guy", in a version that somewhat tones down the original's vocal exuberance, and a blues-tinged torch song like "Play A Sad Song".

The fact remains that the record is pretty much a flop, and at Motown's offices the girls are nicknamed (for a few months) with the ominous moniker "No-hit Supremes".

Like McGlow, Martin also misses her shot at a lifetime: she quits the Supremes in 1963, reducing them to a trio. For a few short months, she lets the streetcar to paradise slip right by.

Between the Supremes (and Motown) and glory, however, stands another intermediary — or rather three: Lamont Dozier, Brian Holland and Edward Holland Jr. Together they form a trio of writers and producers who churn out hits as effortlessly as other well-oiled hit machines like King-Goffin, Bacharach-David and Lennon–McCartney. After the first experiment, “Time Changes Things”, co-written by Brian and Lamont with Janie Bradford on the debut album, the trio's first real shot already hits the mark: the bristling “When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” sails straight to No. 23 on Billboard's Hot 100 Pop Chart. By this point Gordy has already figured it all out: he hands Ross the (vacant) role of the group's lead singer. That he's also having a relationship with the alluring Diana doesn't change the facts: she is the “supreme of the Supremes”, with a lovely Black soul in her voice that nonetheless never stops her sounding damn fresh and flexible. In a word: pop.

Holland-Dozier-Holland aren't short on imagination either: for “Where Did Our Love Go?” (1964) they dream up an outlandish rhythm track — a kid stomping on wooden boards for the entire length of the song, accompanying the dreamy first sing-song melody from the fresh-faced Diana, who lands the lead vocals after a heated argument between Lamont Dozier and Brian Holland, who backed her, and Eddie Holland, who favored Mary Wilson. It's a chewy, irresistible pop candy, even if it doesn't win over the girls themselves, who are unconvinced by that simplistic cheerleader-style chorus (“Baby Baby…”), already turned down by Mary Wells. But the first No. 1 hit has now been served up, and the Supremes quickly come to terms with it: after seeing the chart results, they'll even cut a German-language version.

The emphatic beat of “Baby Love” (1964), built on a lovely interplay of angelic vocal harmonies, is almost a carbon copy of it, kid included. Its run at the top of the charts, though, will double: four weeks. The reason is simple: try listening to it and getting that chorus out of your head, then we'll talk.

Holland-Dozier-Holland churn them out, Diana sings, the girls back her up, and Gordy counts the money. The formula will repeat itself with startling regularity.

“Come See About Me” (1964) is the third consecutive No. 1, with a stronger soul-gospel streak, drums fading in on the intro and layered backing vocals propping up the ex-aspiring designer's new nightingale-like trills. On December 27, 1964, the Supremes bring it to the stage of The Ed Sullivan Show, becoming the first all-Black group to appear on the popular American TV institution, where from then on they'll become regulars.

All that's left for Gordy's label to do is reap what it's sown: the album Where Did Our Love Go (1964) brings the new Motown sound to the masses, selling three million copies worldwide. The Supremes start racking up records: the first band to place three No. 1 singles from the same album, which, for the record, also achieves the best chart placement ever reached by a female group up to that point (it will peak at No. 2 on Billboard for four consecutive weeks in January 1965, staying on the chart for 89 weeks — another record broken).

The new “Sound of Young America” takes shape through a fresh blend of doo-wop, soul and pop, with just a touch of melancholy that never hurts and ever-inventive arrangements: from the percussive intro of “Baby Love” to the octave leap in the chorus of “Standing At The Crossroads Of Love”, from Mike Terry's bellowing baritone sax in “When The Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes” to the horn punctuations of “A Breathtaking Guy”, one of the rare tracks with all three Supremes on lead vocals. Deliciously vacuous songs, produced in the lab with systematic method.

Giving the group even more visibility is their appearance in the concert film “The T.A.M.I. (Teen Age Music International) Show”, alongside, among others, the Rolling Stones, the Beach Boys and Marvin Gaye, released in theaters across America. The Supremes steal the show with their elegant gowns (designed by Diana) and their towering, teased wigs (legend has it they owned at least 300 of them). And Ross is, for all intents and purposes, their frontgirl, with her dramatic eyeliner, sleek lacquered hair and geometric dresses tailored to her slender frame.

If, however, Gordy's cross-class gamble was to weld Black music to white, international pop, he inevitably had to reckon with the group that had, in those years, turned popular music into a brand-new worldwide phenomenon. A Bit Of Liverpool, later renamed “With Love (From Us To You)” for the British market, is the Motown sound paying its dues to Beatlemania. With five Lennon-McCartney covers on the tracklist (“A World Without Love”, “A Hard Day's Night”, “You Can't Do That”, “Can't Buy Me Love” and “I Want To Hold Your Hand”), plus the most innocent-sounding version of “House Of The Rising Sun” ever recorded and a handful of other songs of varied origin, among which Smokey Robinson's “You've Really Got A Hold On Me” shines — already covered by the Fab Four themselves, and certainly better suited to the soulful pipes of the three girls from Detroit.

On the whole, it's a hodgepodge without much rhyme or reason, other than striking while the iron is hot, further widening the geographical reach of the Supremes phenomenon and increasingly casting them as “the Black Beatles”. And the market will (partly) prove it right, with 850,000 copies sold.

At the end of a fabulous 1964, Diana, Florence and Mary set off on their first European tour, cementing their fame especially in Britain, where NME crowns them the female group of the moment.

But for a hit-single band par excellence like the Supremes, it was time to get back to dreaming in 45 rpm. Mission promptly accomplished with the new chart-topping success (their fourth consecutive No. 1), “Stop! In The Name Of Love” (1965), served up by the celebrated firm of Holland-Dozier-Holland. Legend has it that Lamont Dozier aimed that fateful phrase at his girlfriend, who was about to leave him, playing on the “law-love” pun. And so he killed two birds with one stone: a laugh buried the idea of a breakup, and that title gave the Supremes the most popular song of their career. It plays out almost like a jealous scene, opening with an accelerating glissando, with Florence and Mary singing the refrain before Diana steps in, tearfully revealing: “I’ve known of your/ Your secluded nights/ I’ve even seen her, maybe once or twice”. And then that choral, anthemic chorus built like the most heart-wrenching of pleas: “Stop! In the name of love/ before you break my heart”. A perfectly staged piece of theatre, aided by a routine devised specifically for the song, which Paul Williams and Melvin Franklin of the Temptations teach the Supremes: one hand on the hip, the other arm thrust forward, in the classic “stop” pose. The pantomime makes its debut in London, on the BBC show Ready Steady Go!, hosted by Dusty Springfield. And from then on it will forever accompany the song, taking on a meaning far less superficial than it might seem: the sight of three African American girls commanding everyone to stop, in the middle of the Sixties, sounds almost revolutionary.

Definitely less effective is the hook of the follow-up, “Back In My Arms Again”, with its almost confessional tone, but such is the Supremes' impact on the charts by now that it too shoots straight to No. 1, their fifth consecutive single. Holland-Dozier-Holland are the Midas touch of Motown, and Diana Ross is their princess, adored by the public, pampered by the boss and, naturally, envied by her labelmates, especially Martha Reeves, who will complain about the excessive attention the label lavishes on her.

Indeed, the risk that the Supremes might turn into Gordy & Co.'s Barbie dolls was already in the air, borne out by dubious projects like The Supremes Sing Country, Western & Pop (1965), the girls' fourth studio album, on which they're dressed up as cowgirls to reinterpret some country classics, following in the footsteps of Ray Charles's “Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music”. It's a tribute diluted into a soul-pop key that comes across as contrived and muddled, all the more so since more than half the tracklist is produced in-house at the Motown studios by Clarence Paul. In the end, more than for the sugary appeal of the single “My Heart Can't Take It No More”, the record will be remembered chiefly by collectors for featuring the first original composition by a fourteen-year-old Stevie Wonder, who writes the soft “Baby Doll”, performed by Ross with her usual impertinent-schoolgirl flair, alongside a Motown session group, The Andantes.

Too much polish, though. This time, the insincerity of the whole operation is punished by the charts too: the album won't get past No. 79 on the Billboard Top 200, selling only 200,000 copies. A pittance, by their standards.

Meanwhile, the Supremes-Barbie dolls actually do get made...

It will fare only slightly better (325,000 copies sold) with the other tribute, We Remember Sam Cooke (1965), in memory of the soul guru who had passed away a few months earlier. This time the tracklist is made up entirely of Cooke covers, which the Detroit girls deliver with a somewhat calligraphic elegance, achieving particularly notable results in the triptych of "A Change Is Gonna Come"-"You Send Me"-"(Ain't That) Good News", the latter entrusted to Florence Ballard.

Meanwhile, the album More Hits By The Supremes (1965) takes care of rounding up the new hits, from "Stop! In The Name Of Love" to "Back In My Arms Again", adding the smooth single "Nothing But Heartaches", which however fails to crack the Top Ten (No. 11), breaking the magical streak of No. 1 singles. Gordy doesn't take it well, and memos of this sort start circulating around the Motown studios: "For every artist we need to deliver nothing less than Top Ten product, and since the Supremes have a bigger following worldwide than anyone else, for them we'll produce only No. 1 records."

Get out, get out of my life

and let me sleep at night

(from "You Keep Me Hanging On", 1966)

Pop symphonies from Hitsville

Holland-Dozier-Holland get the message, but they realize they need to change something in their magic formula. The result is "I Hear A Symphony", a more complex and layered track, in which Diana's ecstatic vocal sways melodiously through a sort of endless refrain, countered by the two bandmates' hypnotic backing vocals. It works: even Stevie Wonder will notice, recording his own version the following year, as will a very young Michael Jackson, who will cut it in 1970 with the Jackson 5 at Motown's Los Angeles studios. The charts get the message too: it's No. 1 again, to the delight of Gordy and his overworked staff.

The shift toward a more baroque, melodramatic pop sound is confirmed on the next single, "My World Is Empty Without You": Ross loses a bit of her trademark composure and sobs out lines of pure despair: “I need love now, more than before/ I can hardly/ Carry on any more”. And this time it's the surge of strings, even more than the horns, that swells the pathos, together with Earl Van Dyke's Hammond organ mimicking a pipe organ and the Funk Brothers' powerful drumming. It's one of the Supremes' masterpieces, one of the most unsettled and complex entries in their catalogue, yet on the charts it will stall at No. 5.

Alongside this artistic evolution, though, come the harsh laws of marketing, which "demand" the inevitable Christmas album. The Supremes don't blink: a bit of mistletoe, a dusting of fake snow, three little Santa Claus hats on their heads, and there they are wishing everyone Merry Christmas (1965) with a dozen suitably rearranged traditional songs, which Diana sings with all the cool, convent-school composure she can muster. Thoroughly graceful and harmless. Wrapped up with a nice red bow, it will end up under 600,000 Christmas trees in America and beyond.

The next album to reap what had been sown in the studio over recent years, following the new H-D-H blueprint, is I Hear A Symphony (1966), driven by the title track and by "My World Is Empty Without You". But that's not all. Diana starts rehearsing for her future solo recitals with "Stranger In Paradise", the classic from the musical "Kismet" (1953), written by Robert Wright and George Forrest. Then she shapes her sweet-toned voice around the immortal melody of "Yesterday", paying her own tribute to Beatlemania. Next, she outdoes herself with a poignant cover of "Unchained Melody", another chill-inducing American standard, made famous by the Righteous Brothers, and dons her Broadway sequins once again for an intense version of "With A Song In My Heart" (from the Rodgers & Hart musical "Spring Is Here") and for an even more stirring "Without A Song", a 1929 classic from the musical "Great Day". Even riskier, but no less successful, is the leap into the sugary minuet "lifted" from Bach for "A Lover's Concerto", another golden-egg-laying hen that would go on to make the fortune of dozens of performers. Finally, there are the smooth, velvety performances of two typically Supreme-style chants placed by Holland-Dozier-Holland at the close of the tracklist: "Any Girl In Love (Knows What I'm Going Through)" and "He's All I Got".

In short, we can already glimpse the future direction of a singer who is already itching to break free from the teased-up, adolescent schoolgirl persona immortalized in the Supremes' hits. The Ross of I Hear A Symphony is already a seasoned chanteuse who bares every fold of her soul without shame, following in the footsteps of her muse Billie Holiday. She doesn't have the vocal range of an Aretha Franklin or the exuberance of a Chaka Khan, but she has a silvery, luminous touch that fits every melody in an unmistakable way.

But at Hitsville headquarters (nomen omen!), the Motown execs waste no time daydreaming. New hits are needed, and Holland-Dozier-Holland roll up their sleeves. "Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart" (1966), however, is destined to go down as "one of the few singles written by the team that didn't make it to No. 1". It will have to settle for No. 9, despite the experimental echo effects and the dance-driven cadences propelled by the horns, in a style reminiscent of Martha and the Vandellas and the Four Tops.

No matter, though, because another stellar hit is just around the corner, so irresistible that it will even reach No. 1 sixteen years later, when it's re-recorded by Phil Collins. Because there's no resisting "You Can't Hurry Love": blame that cheeky groove that kicks off straight away with a finger-snapping rush of percussion and horns, the bridge that picks up speed over the backing vocals, and the killer chorus that Diana sings with all her devilish swooning charm: “My mama said: you can’t hurry love/ No you just have to wait/ She said love don’t come easy/ It’s a game of give and take”. Another triumph on the Supremes' road from teen-group to mature outfit, thanks to a solid gospel foundation — the original "(You Can't Hurry God) He's Right on Time" by Dorothy Love Coates of the Original Gospel Harmonettes — and sinuous rhythm and blues vibrations. The Supremes would even record an Italian-language version of it, "L'amore verrà".

Sealing their seventh No. 1 hit single comes The Supremes A' Go-Go (1966), the new studio album. Besides "You Can't Hurry Love" and the other single "Love Is Like An Itching In My Heart" — a muscular symphony for trumpets and piano — the tracklist is filled out with an assortment of new covers, drawn from the repertoires of The Elgins ("Put Yourself In My Place"), The Four Tops — the triptych "Baby I Need Your Loving"-"I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)"-"Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)" — The Temptations ("Get Ready"), Martha and the Vandellas ("Come And Get These Memories"), Barrett Strong — "Money (That's What I Want)" — Nancy Sinatra ("These Boots Are Made For Walkin'") and The McCoys ("Hang On Sloopy"). But the real gem of the record is "This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak for You)", a soul-pop number written by Holland-Dozier-Holland together with Sylvia Moy and taken to success a few months earlier by the Isley Brothers, before it also became a signature number for Rod Stewart.

All in all, this is another collection as graceful and harmless as a sip of water, but it will set another record of no small importance: the first album by an all-female group to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Top 200. It will stay on the charts for 60 weeks, selling 3,500,000 copies worldwide and further cementing the Supremes' soul-pop sparkle as a kind of Esperanto adaptable to any type of song. As someone once put it, "it's not a hit, it's the world's love story with three girls".

Alongside the endless range of genres adaptable to Motown's three magic voices, there is also a constant evolution in their music. The new leap forward – and the new chart-topper – comes from the same sessions as "You Can't Hurry Love". For the occasion, the girls are backed by an entire band, The Funk Brothers, and it's no coincidence, because "You Keep Me Hangin' On" (1966) is an explosion of (proto) funk and r'n'b that hurls the Supremes-sound straight into the next decade, with that touch of rock also suggested by the famous telegraph-operator guitar riff (a radio effect in Morse code). Diana's vocal grows fiercer and more aggressive to match the tougher sound and the defiant lyrics of the climax: "So go on, get out, get out of my life, and let me sleep at night". A far cry from Baby Love... It's another masterpiece, destined to be plundered for countless covers, from Vanilla Fudge to Kim Wilde (who will take it back to number 1).

But by the start of 1967 the follow-up is already ready. "Love Is Here And Now You're Gone" – their ninth number-one single – brings the Supremes back onto the baroque-pop path set since "I Hear A Symphony", with strings and harpsichord embellishing Ross's melodramatic performance, which alternates between spoken word and singing, for another snapshot of a relationship in crisis (“You persuaded me to love you/ And I did/ But instead of tenderness/ I found heartache instead”).

Their tenth number one arrives thanks to a film. "The Happening" will be a flop, but the title song will race to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, with its load of Broadway-style soul-jazz-pop and yet another delightfully impertinent performance from the lead singer, bolstered by the usual outpouring of vocal harmonies from Florence and Mary. It will also be the last single credited to "The Supremes": starting with the following "Reflections", in fact, the name will change to "Diana Ross & The Supremes".

Changing the name to Diana Ross & The Supremes was the worst thing that ever happened to us.

(Mary Wilson)

Divorces and metamorphoses

First, though, it's time to pay tribute to the titanic achievement carried out by the glorious trio across a five-year run studded with hits. The Supremes Sing Holland-Dozier-Holland (1967) is exactly what it says on the tin, a collection of Supremes hits written by their favorite songwriters, released just as the latter were about to make their sensational split from Motown. Rounding out the tracklist are a few remakes of songs H-D-H wrote for other artists, from Martha and the Vandellas' "Heat Wave" to the Isley Brothers' "I Guess I'll Always Love You", all the way to the Four Tops' "It's The Same Old Song" and "I'll Turn To Stone".

A few months after the album's release, Motown's three golden songwriters, unhappy with the split of profits and royalties, began a standoff with boss Gordy that would lead them to leave the label at the end of 1967 – but not before dishing out one last round of four singles for Diana and co. Besides the aforementioned "The Happening", three new 45s were released: "Reflections", "In And Out Of Love" and "Forever Came Today". None of them, however, reached the top, though the vibrant "Reflections" came within a whisker (no. 2), marking yet another shift in the girls' sound toward a soul streaked with psychedelia, complete with (very) vintage synths and manipulated tape loops. "In And Out Of Love", on the other hand, wouldn't get past no. 9, another intriguing experiment in this Beach Boys-style psych-surf-pop applied to the trio.

Diana's new, overflowing vocal performance, however, conceals a rift that is corroding the group's harmony. Florence Ballard above all is suffering under the primadonna's dominance: besides having long felt ousted from the lead singer role she believed she deserved, she disapproves of the band's new direction and now feels relegated to a supporting part. Having fallen into a spiral of depression and alcoholism, Florence would be fired by Gordy at the end of 1967 and promptly replaced by Cindy Birdsong (Patti LaBelle and the Blue-Bells). "In And Out Of Love" thus remains the last song featuring the founder's vocal contributions. From here on, it would truly be Diana Ross & The Supremes.

The sad story of Florence Ballard will always remain the dark side of the Supremes' glittering fairy tale. After leaving the band, she would make a largely unsuccessful attempt at a solo career and, also due to her own personal troubles, would decide to leave the music business, after breaking the contract that still tied her to Motown. On February 22, 1976, following admission to a Detroit hospital for alcohol and barbiturate abuse, Florence would be struck down by a heart attack. Some accounts would tell her story as that of the trio's most talented vocalist, robbed of her role as lead singer because of the love affair between Gordy and Ross. Among them is Wilson's own account, who would call the name change "the worst thing that ever happened to the group", reserving more than one poisoned barb for the leader's self-promotion. The fact remains that it's impossible to imagine the Supremes' songs without Diana's unmistakable performances, without that magic dust of crystalline freshness and willful sensuality. Just as it's inevitable that, in a competitive world like pop music, the strongest personalities end up winning out. Still, there will always be a note of bitterness in listening back to the hits of the three friends from Detroit while picturing Florence alone and overweight in front of a whiskey bottle, resigned to her self-destructive fate.

The ruthless removal of the founder from the Supremes also happens materially, on the cover of Reflections (1968), where the original photo featuring Ballard is replaced by a new image depicting Ross, Wilson and Birdsong. The colorful, "psych" artwork, meanwhile, already hints at what the trio's new frontier will be.

The first LP born of the new Diana Ross & The Supremes outfit is only nominally produced by H-D-H, but the three in fact only had a hand in the two singles recorded a year earlier: the excellent title track, driven by the Funk Brothers' wild percussion and James Jamerson's remarkable bassline (Ross herself would call the song one of her favorites by the trio), and "Forever Came Today", which, despite an eccentric arrangement complete with theremin and a hyper-romantic atmosphere ("forever" standing for a lifetime's love), misses the Top 10, the first such case since "Nothing But Heartaches". Holland-Dozier-Holland, however, would remember it as "one of the best songs we wrote for Motown". The Jackson 5 would also take a liking to it, recording a new version on "Moving Violation" (1975).

Otherwise, Reflections bears witness to Gordy's struggle to find new material for the girls after the split with their longtime songwriters. Much of the tracklist, in fact, sounds like a collection of outtakes, and even the various cover versions included fail to leave much of a mark, from Bacharach's "What The World Needs Now Is Love" to the 5th Dimension's "Up, Up And Away".

The single that never was, in the end, is "Then", another original composition by Robinson, which lands on a fine refrain over euphoric rhythms and captivating vocal interplay.

There are places in the world, including some states in my own country, where Black people and white people don't have the same rights, where they can't even walk through the same door. I'd like you to think about that when you go back home.

(Diana Ross addressing the audience at the Royal Command Show, UK, 1968)

The all-star supergroup

That same year saw a collaboration with another Motown supergroup on Diana Ross & The Supremes Join The Temptations (1968), timed to coincide with the TCB TV special dedicated to the partnership between the label's two heavyweights. And indeed, the show put on by the two bands is worth the price of admission all on its own, starting with the opening "Try It Baby," a remake of the Marvin Gaye hit, with Diana's trilling soprano soaring gracefully while Melvin Franklin's bass pumps relentlessly underneath. Then the leading lady turns into a jazz-club chanteuse, surrounded by the Temptations' backing harmonies, bringing back the magic of "I Second That Emotion," the Robinson classic that even Japan would go on to cover. There's also room for that Ashford & Simpson tour de force "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," which Ross herself would triumphantly revisit as a solo artist two years later, and for an instant hit like "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" (No. 2 on Billboard), elevated by the meeting of the Temptations' soulful vocalizing and another masterful performance from Ross, by now settled into a far more mature and sensual vocal register than in her early days.

By this point, Diana is a Broadway diva, a refined jazz-soul singer who can even allow herself to soar to the heavenly, Bacharach-esque peaks of "This Guy's In Love With You" amid a triumph of horns and countermelodies, before cooing mischievously, in the other choral tableau of "I'll Try Something New," lines that are the very quintessence of Robinson's philosophy: “Every day/ We can play/ On the Milky Way/ And if that don’t do/ I’ll have to try something new”.

Diana Ross & The Supremes Join The Temptations is yet another knockout blow: it revives both groups' fortunes and brings home another handsome pile of dollars, climbing to No. 2 on the Billboard 200. Gordy would try the same move again a year later with Together (1969), which reunited the two groups for a less thrilling grab-bag of assorted covers, including the Band's "The Weight," Sly & the Family Stone's "Sing A Simple Song" and Frankie Valli's "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" (with Mary Wilson on lead vocals, anticipating Diana's departure).

Love Child (1968), on the other hand, is the first Supremes record not to include a single song by the Holland-Dozier-Holland trio. But this time that's not necessarily a problem, because Diana & co. are breaking free from that reliably successful but by now somewhat limiting soul-pop formula. So the girls reap the rewards of their growth, the product of a string of live shows that had refined and expanded their vocal abilities more and more. Though Wilson would later complain about the emphasis placed specifically on Ross's voice, at the expense of the group's harmonies. The fact remains that a tour de force like "Love Child," with Diana sounding angrier and wilder than ever, backed by the Temptations, is worth celebrating not only as the Supremes' first "political song" (about the hardships of having a child out of wedlock) but also as one of the most dramatic and powerful orchestrations in the Supremes' catalogue, built around the Funk Brothers' lashing guitar. A powerful and influential track: one suspects that in the family record collection of, say, Janelle Monae, it would have had a guaranteed place.

It's not the only nod to social themes, because tracks like "Does Your Mama Know About Me" – a gorgeous orchestral ballad masking the unease of its subject matter – and the funk-tinged "(He's My) Sunny Boy" (another Robinson composition) are further raw and honest snapshots of life for a woman who grew up in the ghettos of Detroit. To catch a glimpse of the star's interpretive flair, meanwhile, one need only listen to the pounding plea of "I'll Set You Free," the aching sighs of "Keep An Eye" (written and backed by gospel harmonies from Ashford & Simpson), or the elegant cover of Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell's "You Ain't Livin' Till You're Lovin'."

Far more a Ross showcase than a true group effort by the trio, Love Child would mark another decisive step toward the lead singer's emancipation from the carefree company of her adolescence.

At the end of a wild, roller-coaster 1968 – which also found them playing three singing nuns on the Tarzan TV series (!) and tackling covers from Barbra Streisand's Broadway musical "Funny Girl" (Diana Ross & The Supremes Sing And Perform "Funny Girl") – the Supremes were invited to the prestigious Royal Command Show, one of the most important dates on the British aristocracy's calendar. In front of the entire royal family and an audience packed with stars (among others, Paul McCartney, Michael Caine and Roman Polanski), Diana & co. breeze through their repertoire with effortless ease. The atmosphere is hushed, as befits the occasion, but toward the end of the set, after a reprise of "Somewhere," the other two step back and Ross is left alone at the microphone as the music stops: "I don't often get the chance to speak to people as powerful as those in front of me today," she says. "I, as you can see, am Black, while you are white. I sing and you listen to me, and then when it's all over we leave the hall together. There are places in the world, including some states in my own country, the USA, where Black people and white people don't have the same rights, where they can't even leave through the same door. I'd like you to think about that when you go home tonight." As Ross rejoins her bandmates, an embarrassed silence falls over the hall, broken only by a few timid claps from the back rows, until everyone, including members of the royal family, rises to their feet and keeps applauding for two straight minutes. Ross thanks the crowd and introduces the next song. By the end of the concert, the Supremes would even be received by the Queen Mother.

Motown is at the absolute height of its powers: in December 1968, the label lands no fewer than five singles in the Top 10: "Love Child" by Diana Ross and The Supremes, "Cloud Nine" by the Temptations, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" by Marvin Gaye, "For Once in My Life" by Stevie Wonder, and "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me" by Diana Ross and The Supremes with the Temptations.

Gordy, however, keeps demanding more and more from his princess, whom he already envisions flying solo, launched into the firmament of pop stardom. The anxiety of this period would lead Ross herself to suffer from anorexia – as she revealed in her autobiography "Secrets of a Sparrow." And there had already been warning signs on stage: in 1967, during a performance in Boston, she collapsed mid-show and was hospitalized for nervous exhaustion.

But Diana is already preparing for a solo career, and begins appearing without her bandmates on TV shows like The Dinah Shore Show and the Bob Hope special. By mid-1969, Gordy has already decided she will leave the group by year's end and start work on her first solo album.

Meanwhile, though, Let The Sunshine In (1969) comes out, with an explosive new hit single called "I'm Livin' In Shame," steeped in heady psych-soul fragrances, driven by a bouncy rhythm and yet another prodigious performance from Ross, giving voice to the suffering of a young unwed mother in a kind of spiritual sequel to "Love Child" (the story is inspired by Douglas Sirk's film "Imitation Of Life"). Less compelling, on the other hand, is the much-anticipated "Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In" medley, which, for all its lavish arrangements, betrays a certain coolness on the singer's part in voicing the vibrant generational anthems of "Hair," the musical-manifesto against the Vietnam War.

This time, even another Robinson contribution (the saccharine "The Composer") fails to leave a mark, as does the watered-down cover of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everyday People." It is, however, a gut-punch to see the melancholy figure of Florence Ballard resurface amid the melodic swirls of "Let The Music Play," an outtake dug up from I Hear A Symphony.

By now, though, all that's left of the original Supremes is a mere shadow.

Ironically, “Someday We’ll Be Together” – no title was ever more ill-advised! – would become the trio’s twelfth and final number one in five years, thanks to its breezy doo-wop swing, written seven years earlier by the little-known trio of Johnny Bristol, Jackey Beavers and Harvey Fuqua. But it would also be the swan song on 45 for “Diana & The Supremes”, followed by the swan song on Lp, Cream Of The Crop (1969), the last drop to be squeezed from the dream trio, “the cream of the crop”.

In truth, though, aside from the aforementioned single – already conceived as a Ross solo vehicle, backed by two session singers (Maxine and Julia Waters) – the rousing anthem “The Young Folks” (with lines like “They’re marching with signs/ They’re standing in lines” evoking the civil rights struggle) and the impassioned “Shadows Of Society”, another statement on the theme of motherhood (“Young mothers’ faces filled with shame/ It’s not enough to give her baby life, they say”), Gordy scrapes the bottom of the barrel, between outtakes and unlikely covers, including the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ In The Wind”.

The die is now cast. After Ross tipped off Billboard a few weeks earlier, the farewell officially takes place at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada, on January 14, 1970. So ends the story of one of the most legendary partnerships in black music. Because without Diana, there are no more Supremes, even though the name would officially live on until 1977 – with Jean Terrell replacing the leading lady, then Lynda Laurence stepping in for Birdsong in 1972, and Scherrie Payne, Susaye Greene and Karen Jackson taking Wilson’s place in 1976. They would still land a few hits, from “Up The Ladder To The Roof” (1970) to “Stoned Love” and “Nathan Jones” (1971), from “Automatically Sunshine” (1972) to “Bad Weather” (1973). Mary, Cindy and Jean would also team up with the Four Tops for a couple of successful singles (“River Deep, Mountain High” and “You Gotta Have Love In Your Heart”).

The success of that golden era, though, would never be repeated, and the legend of Detroit’s three golden girls would end up confined mostly to anthologies, musicals and TV documentaries, alongside a spot in the Guinness Book of Records, with an overall tally of 60 million records sold.

Will I still manage to succeed on my own? So many have tried the same thing and failed.

(Diana Ross, “The Soulful Divas”)

Climbing the mountains

Diana is poised for launch. Her pedigree as a black & white heroine makes her perfect for the big solo leap, with a potential audience stretching from the Black ghettos of Detroit to the upper class of Manhattan. Yet she’s afraid of taking that leap. “Will I be appreciated? Will my records still be hits? So many have tried the same thing and failed”, she wonders anxiously (cf. David Nathan, “The Soulful Divas”).

But her first move is as a godmother figure. Almost like a fairy godmother, with teased hair and the glittering sequins of her slinky dress accentuating her slender silhouette, she plays hostess to an eleven-year-old boy in the Saturday-night TV living room of ABC’s “Hollywood Palace”. It’s the showbiz christening of Michael Jackson. And it will again be Diana who puts her stamp on the debut album by the five Jackson brothers (“Diana Ross presents The Jackson 5”, 1969), naturally released on Motown. But it wouldn’t just be a one-off publicity stunt: Ross would become a kind of “artistic weaning figure” (some unkind tongues would even say sexual) for Jacko, with whom she would always share a special bond of affection, renewed through collaborations, cross-references and declarations of love, right up to the King of Pop’s sad final chapter, when in his will he expressed the wish to entrust his children Prince Michael, Paris and Blanket to Ross, should grandmother Katherine pass away. On the day of the funeral, Diana would not be present, but would send a large white rose: the same one little Michael had given her on the day of his first Motown audition.

The official start of the former Supremes frontwoman’s solo career is dated April 1970, with the single “Reach Out And Touch (Somebody’s Hand)”, penned by the magical Black songwriting duo Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, future husband and wife, as well as performers of hits like “Street Corner” and “Solid”. It’s a lovely soul-gospel melodrama with good humanitarian intentions (“Oh, reach out and touch somebody’s hand/ Make this world a better place if you can”), which would melt plenty of hearts in the spring of 1970, though it wouldn’t climb past No. 20 on Billboard. Ross, however, would make it a staple of her concerts, complete with the perfect excuse to shake hands with the audience.

The real breakthrough, though, comes just a few weeks later with another Ashford & Simpson gem, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough”, already featured in the Supremes/Temptations collaboration and previously sung by the noble pipes of Marvin Gaye, who in 1967 had turned it into a duet with the ill-fated Tammi Terrell (who died of a brain tumor shortly after, at just 25). But the definitive version would remain Diana’s, who, backed by a triumphant arrangement – horns, strings and Ashford and Simpson themselves on backing vocals – delivers a sumptuous performance, ranging from the theatrical spoken intro to a soaring, heart-wrenching flight worthy of the most melancholic Dionne Warwick. It would be her first solo single to top the charts, earning a Grammy nomination. And no one could ever argue better than Diana Ross that “there's no mountain high enough” that can’t be climbed.

Her Lp debut, Diana Ross (1970), capitalizes on that single’s massive success and the creativity of the Ashford & Simpson duo, who were encouraged by Gordy to break away from the Supremes’ Motown standards, in search of new vocal shadings from the singer, increasingly called upon to shed the trio’s chiffon-soft soul-pop and transform into a fully-fledged Black vocalist. Ross gets the chance to bare her claws, but also her vulnerability. And the fruits are already evident in tracks like “Now That There’s You” – with a masterful use of pauses in the first five bars, the vibrant high notes of the chorus and the free improvisations of the finale – “You’re All I Need To Get By”, which, instead of Motown’s pounding sound, stages bluesy languor and hypnotic bass lines as a backdrop to a vocal performance that’s more soulful than ever, and the new version of “Keep An Eye”, which transforms the Supremes’ innocent rendition (found on Love Child) into a funky moan, renewing its sinister warning: “Just like a snake on the limb of a tree, a friend is an enemy you can’t see”. Halfway between the Supremes’ carefree lightness and the more passionate approach demanded by Ashford & Simpson sit “Something On My Mind” (formerly a single by Rita Wright aka Syreeta in 1968) and the other velvety soul gem “Dark Side Of The World”, previously recorded by the Velvelettes and worthy of Gaye at his best.

Overall, Diana Ross is a formidable collection of soul ballads, well crafted by the songwriting-production duo and arranged with an orchestral taste already typical of the ’70s, with the skillful use of strings standing out in particular. For the former Supremes singer, it’s the cornerstone on which she would build her entire solo career. Maybe not visually, though: the baffling cover, which shows her painfully thin against a sepia background, dressed as a child – in a t-shirt and torn denim shorts – apple in hand and a vacant stare, would remain the unsolved riddle of the whole project.

But there’s no time to waste: just a few months later, the follow-up, Everything Is Everything (1971), is already in stores. A baffling rush, the product of the frantic production pace of the record industry at the time. But while Diana’s gripping “woman's diary” had left everyone holding their breath, this hodgepodge of covers and new material put together by Deke Richards is nothing more than another showcase for an increasingly stressed Ross, constantly shuttled from stage to studio, and moreover still called upon to play her parallel role as “interpreter of anything and everything” – from the Beatles’ “Come Together” to Bacharach’s “(They Long To Be) Close To You”. A role she undeniably carries off with professionalism, but certainly not the one that made her immortal.

The bouncy pop of “My Place” and the more subdued title track don’t add much to what had already been tried with the Supremes, the funky-grooved warbling of “Ain’t No Sad Song” is little more than a stylistic exercise, while, despite its delirious title, “Doobedood’ndoobe, Doobedood’ndoobe, Doobedood’ndoo” showcases some of Richards’ good r’n’b instincts, though it’s used mainly as a showcase for Ross’s vocal gymnastics. If anything, it’s the hushed soul of “Baby It’s Love” that revives the singer’s new sensual, tormented soul, forged by her work with Ashford & Simpson: thanks to Gaye’s unmistakable touch and an arrangement built on sinuous sax lines, guitar flourishes and the obsessive pulse of the percussion. The real chart assault, though, comes with the suspended rarefaction of “I’m Still Waiting”, which would also become her first UK No. 1 single: the story of losing her childhood love is the perfect springboard for a new soul-tinged melodrama, spiced up with a guitar intro and hushed backing vocals.

After her first television special (“Diana!”), which finds her at work in a new showcase of covers and hits from her repertoire with the Jackson 5 as guests, comes Surrender (1971), its cover showing her heavily made-up, with eyes smudged by thick eyeliner. It’s the classic transitional album, caught between her first solo steps and the Holiday-inspired turn of Lady Sings The Blues. Ashford & Simpson are once again brought in behind the console, reviving the debut’s formula and writing every track except for the remake of the evergreen “Reach Out I’ll Be There”, the Motown classic that Gloria Gaynor would soon transform into a rousing disco anthem.

It's missing the knockout blow, but the album is a decent stew of orchestral pop ballads and soul flourishes, starting with the title track, opened by insistent piano chimes and hammering percussion, in service of one of the most passionate vocal performances of her repertoire. Ashford & Simpson scatter a few sharp melodies here and there – from "Did You Read The Morning Paper?" to the single "Remember Me", which would crack the Top 20 – while the enveloping closing ballad "All The Befores" serves as a dress rehearsal for the forthcoming "It's My Turn". On the whole, though, the album lacks the hooks to win over the public, and tellingly it will fail to break into the Top 40: something of a disaster, given Ross's popularity at the time.

Diana had been transformed. She was a different artist: the way she followed the music, the way she caressed the words… Billie Holiday had entered her soul.

(Gil Askey)

The Lady Sings the Blues

In January 1971 Diana leaves Gordy and marries PR man Robert Silberstein, even though she is about to have a daughter, Rhonda, with the Motown boss. It's time for new turns and new men of providence. The one knocking at her door at 701 North Maple Drive in Beverly Hills, California, in the thick of summer, is a former Motown trumpeter and arranger, Gil Askey. When he walks into the living room, he finds Diana holding little Rhonda, sitting on the floor humming, surrounded by Billie Holiday records. "As I listened to Diana sing," Askey would recall, "I could see right away that she had transformed. She was a different artist: the way she followed the music, the way she caressed the words. Billie had entered Diana's soul and revolutionized her approach to singing. It was miraculous."

Gordy, however, doesn't exit the scene. It's he who convinces his ex-partner to follow him to Hollywood. As it happens, he's holding in his hands none other than "Lady Sings The Blues", Billie Holiday's autobiography written together with journalist William Dufty. And he has one obsession in mind: turning it into a film, naturally with his protégée in the lead role. Askey, already the architect behind many of the Supremes' shows, engineers Ross's musical "reinvention" in a jazz vein. He puts together the soundtrack, composing the arrangements alongside Oliver Nelson and Benny Golson. All Diana had to do was prove the usual doomsayers wrong, like Leonard Feather, Holiday's former producer, who confidently theorized: "I can't think of a less suitable choice for Billie." Instead, she passes the test with flying colors: Ross changes her style, slows her singing down, lingers painfully over the wounds, skillfully balancing romance and excitement. In the end, Gordy would say, "she had gotten so deeply into Holiday's character that she was singing in much too jazzy a way." And Askey would add: "I had nothing to teach her. She had understood that Holiday had a small voice but used it with great intelligence. She had instinctively grasped the subtleties Holiday used to convey feelings like confusion and pain."

On the set of the film Lady Sings The Blues (1972) too, the metamorphosis proves astonishing, so much so that it earns Ross an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, plus nominations at the NYFCC Awards and the BAFTA Awards, and a Golden Globe win. The film, co-starring Richard Pryor and Billy Dee Williams, grosses more than 25 million dollars in the US and receives four further Oscar nominations, including one for Best Original Score, which would shoot to the top of the Billboard 200 – Ross's only No. 1 as a solo artist – selling two million copies. For the occasion, Gordy recruits jazz legends like Benny Golson and Oliver Nelson, who handle the arrangements, Michel Legrand (author of "Love Theme"), and top-tier session men such as Red Callender, Max Bennett, Harry "Sweets" Edison and George Bohanon. This small jazz combo accompanies Diana as she reinterprets Holiday classics ("Strange Fruit", "God Bless The Child", "My Man", the title track), which on the first disc are interspersed with dialogue from the film. A not entirely successful experiment, to be fair: the second disc, which leaves room only for the songs, works better.

White gardenia in her hair and golden sequins on her back, the former angelic schoolgirl of the Supremes finds herself thrown into the whirlwind of passions and ruinous excess that was Lady Day's life, singing of sex, alcoholism and gambling ("Fine And Mellow"), of searing heartache ("You've Changed", "Good Morning Heartache"), of tears and reckonings set to a swing beat, between the piano and horns of "I Cried For You (Now It's Your Turn To Cry Over Me)". Twelve years after Billie Holiday's death, her restless soul is reincarnated in the diminutive diva from the Black ghettos of Detroit.

Galvanized by the success of the Lady of the Blues, Ross pours the full weight of her Holiday-esque despair into a new sentimental ballad that will break hearts on the charts too. "Touch Me In The Morning" (1973), her second solo single to hit No. 1 on Billboard, is another mountain scaled. First and foremost on the vocal front: the two writers, Michael Masser and Ron Miller, set her up with a tour de force that she herself fears she won't be able to pull off, working herself to the brink of an emotional breakdown in the studio. In the end, though, her flawless pitch and velvety soprano manage to overcome those treacherous obstacles, with the support of gospel-tinged backing vocals and an orchestral crescendo that culminates in a triumphant chorus, complete with a striking closing effect in which Diana duets with her own overdubbed voice. More than Billie Holiday, though, the point of reference here seems to be Barbra Streisand, who would become something of an obsession for Diana, fueling a rivalry that, on closer inspection, was rather pointless. The fact remains that in fifty years of careers, the two would never meet.

To put together the material for the self-titled album Touch Me In The Morning (1973), Deke Richards is once again called in, bringing in various songwriters and churning out another mixed bag of ballads, covers (an insipid "Imagine") and jazzy homages. Among the ballads, only the title track truly stands out, with "All Of My Life", "We Need You" and "Leave A Little Room" little more than pale copies of it. Things fare better when Diana puts the jazz-club chanteuse's sequins back on, immersing herself in the smoky, nocturnal 1940s atmosphere of "Little Girl Blue" and "My Baby (My Baby My Own)", or when she takes to the Broadway stage for the more than eight minutes of "Brown Baby/Save The Children", an engaging pop symphony dressed up with string arrangements and polished countermelodies. The lyrics, meanwhile, continue the evolution toward social and female themes, from motherhood to relationships with men.

Buoyed by the single and by the fame Ross had gained as the new Holiday, the album climbs to No. 5 on Billboard and No. 1 on the R&B album chart.

Oscar Crossroads

But Gordy is never satisfied. The Motown boss, who has meanwhile moved his offices to Los Angeles, wants to complete his protégée's metamorphosis by having her duet with the No. 1 star of his stable: his majesty Marvin Gaye. In truth, the idea had been brewing in Motown's offices since 1970 already. The prince of soul, however, feels the weight of a curse that has struck his previous duet partnerships: his longtime partner Tammi Terrell, who collapsed in his arms during a concert at Hampden Sydney College, had died three years later of a brain tumor; Mary Wells had left the label after watching her career collapse following the release of "Together", and Kim Weston had suffered the same fate after the end of the "Take Two" sessions. Gaye has made up his mind: he will never duet with a woman again.

If I can't smoke, I can't sing.

(Marvin Gaye)

There's no way of knowing exactly what arguments Gordy used to make her change her mind, though flattering the ego of the author of "What's Going On" with promises of eternal glory certainly helped. The fact remains that, at Motown's Hollywood studios, the stars align. Not without some initial friction, though. Marvin lights up a joint, Diana protests. But he won't hear of it: "If I can't smoke, I can't sing." As the story goes, the diva played the diva to the hilt, screaming insults and hurling bunches of grapes from the table at poor Gordy. In the end, a solution is found: the two record in separate sessions, sound engineer Russ Terrana blends their respective vocals, and the job is done.

So Diana, with enviable nerve, can face the press afterwards and declare with a dazzling, ear-to-ear smile: "Working with Marvin was fantastic."

It's a pleasant record, Diana & Marvin (1973), with two performers in top form, eager to test themselves on each other's ground, but it lacks the empathy and feeling that can turn the meeting of two artists into pure alchemy. The contrived nature of the project, in short, ends up undermining its full success. After the fine showing of the soft opening ballad ("You Are Everything", already a hit for the Stylistics) halfway between Motown and Philly soul, matched by the shakier "Love Twins", Motown's two aces trade vocals on a rousing remake of Wilson Pickett's "Don't Knock My Love", though here it's mainly Gaye's velvety falsetto steering the funky-soul ups and downs, before sealing yet another gift from Ashford & Simpson with the heartfelt "Just Say, Just Say", retracing the Stylistics' footsteps again on the lush "Stop, Look, Listen (To Your Heart)" — with Ross at the peak of her sensuality — and staging lively call-and-response on the equally languid "My Mistake (Was To Love You)" and "I'm Falling In Love With You". If critical expectations were only partly met, commercial results were not lacking, boosted by the single "You Are Everything" (No. 9 in the US) and a solid chart placement for the album on both sides of the Atlantic (No. 26 in the United States, No. 6 in the UK).

Do you know where you're going to?

Do you like the things that life is showing you?

Where are you going to, do you know?

(from "Do You Know Where You're Going To")

The Motown diva's fame is now such that it even opens the doors of the Japanese Imperial Palace for the first audience granted to an artist by Empress Nagako, wife of Hirohito.

Physically, too, her transformation is now complete: she's no longer the schoolgirl with teased hairstyles and checkered dresses from the Supremes days, nor the skin-and-bones teenager pictured on the cover of her solo debut. She's a cover-girl figure, sensual and ethereal, with impossibly long lashes, bold make-up and a lush afro mane.

On the cover of Last Time I Saw Him (1973) she appears as a flawless model, perched on a stool, in an elegant white outfit with a hat. The content, however, is a mid-'70s hodgepodge, ranging from country to pop, from r'n'b to gospel. Not exactly the kind of record that suits Ross best, since she's generally more at ease with projects helmed by a single creative entity (from H-D-H to Ashford and Simpson, from Richard Perry to Rodgers and Edwards). Indeed, it won't be a breakthrough, not even on the charts (No. 52 on Billboard). That said, the title track remains one of the most eccentric and disorienting episodes in the former Supremes member's entire catalogue, riding a fun country-pop number flanked by banjo, strings and horns with her supple, swooping vocals, serving the story of a woman left alone at the Greyhound bus station. So disorienting, in fact, that it would find a home not so much in her concert setlists as in an episode of The Muppet Show.

After this surprising opening, though, the record offers few thrills, piling on the usual ingredients, with saccharine well in excess on the syrupy ballads ("No One's Gonna Be A Fool Forever", "Love Me", "Sleepin'", "Turn Around") and a bit more spice in the semi-gospel "You", with organ and a bluesy piano line accompanying her vocal excursion from whisper to steepest peaks, and above all in the two street-wise funk-rock numbers "I Heard A Love Song (But You Never Made A Sound)" — paced by piano and percussion, with sly wah-wah guitar in the background — and "Stone Liberty", which lands a great epic choral refrain in the best Motown style.

A year later (April 1974) Ross sets a new record: she's the first African-American woman to co-host the Oscar Night, for the 46th Academy Awards (alongside John Huston, Burt Reynolds and David Niven). And her bond with cinema continues in 1975 with her role in the film "Mahogany", directed by Gordy himself, in which Diana plays Tracy Chambers, a Chicago secretary who dreams of becoming a model and designer. Her third No. 1 solo hit comes courtesy of the film's theme song, the splendid ballad "Do You Know Where You're Going To?", written by Michael Masser-Gerry Goffin-Lee Holdridge and already recorded in 1973 by Thelma Houston, Whitney's aunt. Ross's version, however, is immeasurably superior, with the tender music-box piano of the intro giving way to a sweeping orchestral crescendo wrapping around the clarity of her dreamy soprano, up to the apotheosis of the strings carrying the main melody and the equally poignant digression of the bridge. It remains one of her masterpieces and earns her an Oscar nomination for Best Song.

Then just a hat-trick of other records, for good measure: in March 1976, broadcasting live from Amsterdam, she sings "Do You Know Where You're Going To?" for the Oscar jury, marking the first time ever a singer performs via satellite; she's also the first Black vocalist to appear on the cover of Rolling Stone; while in September Billboard magazine names her "the greatest female artist of the 20th century".

At the peak of her career, Ross doesn't give up her role as a mother: after her second daughter Tracee, born in 1972, three years later she gives birth to her third daughter, Chudney. Her love life, on the other hand, remains turbulent: in 1976 she divorces Silberstein.

I don't know how to sing this one. Disco music isn't for me.

(Diana Ross during the "Love Hangover" sessions)

Queen of disco

The pace of production has only slightly slowed down. But in 1976 there's a seal to put on her renewed ascent: a portrait on black canvas by Victor Skrebneski, in which Diana's beautiful oval face seems to emerge from the void, with a sensual, piercing gaze. A perfect cover for an album that is a foregone success. Because what's driving Diana Ross (1976) is not just the already-eternal melody of "Do You Know". Gordy has sniffed out the times. And the star-studded cast of producers (Michael Masser, Hal Davis, Ashford & Simpson, Don Costa, Lawrence Brown and Gil Askey) has turned the Motown studios into a discotheque. Disco fever was sweeping across the States. A few months earlier Donna Summer, egged on by Moroder, had floored America with the simulated orgasms of "Love To Love You Baby". Could the former fresh-faced schoolgirl of "Baby Love" plunge into the same, sweltering darkroom? Diana really doesn't think so. Gordy's men, however, always know how to make the right case. Hal Davis calls her into the studio at an unusual hour: 9 pm. She arrives on time, in a lovely evening gown, as befits a queen. But she's a bit puzzled. "I've had a couple of drinks prepared to warm us up a little," the producer announces. She's even more puzzled. But in the end she lets herself go: she takes off her shoes, as she used to do in front of the microphone, and starts singing "Love Hangover", the new nearly eight-minute time-bomb that the duo Pam Sawyer-Marilyn McLeod had set ticking for her. After the already highly sensual opening midtempo, all sighs and warm shivers, at the 2:42 mark the track kicks up a gear. "I don't know how to sing this one," she protests. "No problem, let's start again," he replies. Reaching the fateful moment once more, the studio lights up with the red and blue flashes of a strobe ball installed by sound engineer Russ Terrana. To make that explosion more "human", Davis has prepared an imposing string section: 14 violins, 4 cellos and 4 violas, plus congas for the rhythm change. Diana is amused, now she trusts him. And she throws herself into it. The disco cadences set the track ablaze, with an acceleration that would get even a cyborg's hips moving, while Diana dances, sweats, pants and improvises vocal runs at will. Disco music can't be resisted. And she doesn't want to resist it: "If there's a cure for this, I don't want it".

“Love Hangover” is a global hit: it soars to No. 1 on the Billboard chart and sweeps through discotheques worldwide, even earning a Grammy nomination. Diana has shed her skin once again: she's now one of the new queens of disco, alongside the aforementioned Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor.

Beyond the two hit singles, the album showcases Ross at the peak of her expressive maturity: a languid balladeer amid strings and piano lines on the other 45, “I Thought It Took A Little Time (But Today I Fell In Love)”, again penned by Masser; a sophisticated jazzy entertainer on the ragtime-stepping vaudeville of “Kiss Me Now” (with the lowest tones of her career and a comical Louis Armstrong impression); or a caged panther on “One Love In My Lifetime”, a scratchy funk-rock blend steeped in 70s flavor.

From “Mahogany” comes a reprise – here in sung form – of the evocative theme “After You”, while the other Hollywood foray, “Smile”, immerses the famous song composed by Charlie Chaplin in dreamy atmospheres, orchestrated by Askey. Like a hushed confession in the dressing room at the end of the show, “You're Good My Child” bares the diva's most intimate, human side, her voice slipping into a huskier register than usual, almost betraying a hint of fatigue.

A mature and engaging album, Diana Ross will climb to No. 5 on the Billboard 200, cementing the Detroit singer's reputation as a universal performer, ever more versatile and complete.

Sealing the former Supremes member's transformation from mere vocalist to all-around entertainer is the triumphant recital An Evening With Diana (1977), recorded live at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles, three years after the previous Live At Caesar's Palace (1974). Across more than an hour of music, monologues, sighs (as only she can do), gags and laughter, a charmingly chatty Ross collects a well-deserved standing ovation for her career, retracing the history of American song, from Bacharach-David (“Here I Am”) to Harry Nilsson (“Everybody's Got 'Em”, “Me And My Arrow”, “Lifeline”), from a moving Chaplin “Smile” to the evergreen show tune “The Lady Is A Tramp” immortalized by Frank Sinatra, from the saga of Motown and the Supremes to the epic of jazz's “Working Girls” (Billie Holiday, Josephine Baker, Ethel Waters, Bessie Smith), right up to her latest hits. A colossal one-woman show that sends the American audience into raptures and earns her a Tony Award, followed by an Emmy nomination for the accompanying TV special. Anyone who accuses Ross of being too cold or lacking grit should be prescribed, for therapeutic purposes, a full listen to this unforgettable “Evening With Diana”.

But the Detroit diva's 1977 doesn't end here. Because by autumn a new studio work is already ready, produced by Richard Perry. Rather than doubling down on disco music, Baby It's Me (1977) shuffles the deck once again, unveiling romantic pop-dance novelties (“Gettin' Ready For Love”, layered with strings and swinging sax), soul sing-alongs reminiscent of the Supremes era (the driving “You Got It”, the choral “Top Of The World”, the elegant “All Night Lover”), loose-limbed funk à la Stevie Wonder (“Baby It's Me”, built entirely on interlocking guitar and trumpet), covers of Wonder himself (the achingly romantic “Too Shy To Say”) and of Bill Withers (“The Same Love That Made Me Laugh”), upbeat rhythm 'n' blues dance numbers (“Your Love Is So Good For Me”), and the usual candlelit pop ballads (“Confide In Me” and “Come In From The Rain”, written by songwriter Melissa Manchester).

Overall, an album with no standout moments sharp enough to seduce the charts (it will peak at No. 18), but pleasant and sophisticated nonetheless. It will remain one of the best kept secrets in Ross's discography, marking, through Perry's production, a first step toward the former Supremes queen's emancipation from the Motown machine.

The production tour de force resumes with the release of Ross (1978), an odd collection that pairs new tracks on side A with new versions of songs recorded for other projects on side B. It will go down in history, however, for featuring another disco triumph, “Lovin', Livin' And Givin'”, an astonishing remix of a track featured on the soundtrack of “Thank God It's Friday” (a snapshot of the world of disco music, with Donna Summer starring and performing the Oscar-winning hit “Last Dance”). Heavily influenced by the very arrangements of the Summer-Moroder duo's “I Feel Love”, “Lovin', Livin' And Givin'” marks a further milestone in the fusion of disco and electronics, with icy synth beds accompanying the new sensual sighs of a possessed Ross. It's a hit that never quite happened (oddly, it was only released as a single in the UK) but it remains a precious one-off in her output.

After such an advanced experiment, the following “What You Gave Me” (written by Ashford & Simpson for Gaye and Terrell in 1969) inevitably sounds dated, a kind of proto-disco awash in violins, handclaps and assorted 70s effects; better, perhaps, the other dance novelty “You Were The One”, a classic club song with a funky stride, propelled by a forceful bassline and enhanced by a formidable vocal performance from Ross. The accompanying ballads remain elegant but rather harmless: from the smooth “Never Say I Don't Love You” to the country-pop of “Sorry Doesn't Always Make It Right” and the outtakes “Where Did We Go Wrong” (salvaged from the Last Time I Saw Him sessions) and “To Love Again” (written by Masser-Goffin and left off the “Mahogany” soundtrack).

Ross is essentially a side diversion. Because the main project occupying Diana in those months is a new film, “The Wiz” (1978), an African-American remake of “The Wizard of Oz” directed by Sidney Lumet. Her portrayal of Dorothy – a role that had belonged to Judy Garland forty years earlier – will earn her a Best Actress nomination at the Saturn Awards. For the project she also manages to rope in her young friend Michael Jackson, cast as the Scarecrow. But the film will flop, and even the soundtrack – featuring various Black artists – won't make a dent on the charts, despite behind-the-scenes work from Quincy Jones and the funky duet between Diana and Jacko on “Ease On Down The Road”, which will nonetheless earn a Grammy nomination.

Diana had become an icon of the gay movement, and I wanted to make that clear to everyone through a song.

(Nile Rodgers on “I'm Coming Out”)

She’s The Boss

The glittering 70s close out with her reigning as undisputed leader: The Boss (1979). Perhaps not a coincidental title, considering that just two years later Diana Ross would allow herself the luxury of going solo, leaving behind her longtime boss, Berry Gordy, who had been her mentor, partner and inspiration for an entire career (even on film sets) for nearly two decades. Here, though, we're still under the Motown banner and in the capable hands of Ashford & Simpson, who put their creative talent and backing vocals at the service of a Ross in tremendous form (even in the come-hither snapshot on the cover). This is clear right from the explosive opening of “No One Gets The Prize”, an infectious disco anthem about a female friendship ruined by competition over a man (hence the title's wise conclusion). Propelled by New Orleans-style horns, Ross launches into another spine-tingling vocal tour de force, smudging the purity of her soprano with the visceral grit of a Chaka Khan to cry out “I was denied a love that satisfied”. A similar script plays out on the following upbeat “I Ain't Been Licked”, where bass and guitar take center stage, and on the passionate “Once In The Morning”, which echoes Donna Summer a little.

But the real assault on the dancefloors is the title track: a dizzying dance progression that carries Diana ever higher, reaching the highest vocal register of her entire career, to the point that she herself would later recall: “Everyone thought someone else was actually singing that part” (cf. David Nathan, “The Soulful Divas”). “The Boss” will become a must on the dance charts of the era, also returning her to the Billboard Top 20 (No. 19).

With the strobe lights switched off, Diana allows herself a soft, almost intimate mini-recital, with the hushed ballad “All For One”, the relaxed R&B of “It's My House”, and the easy listening of “Sparkle” (with a polished production reminiscent of Perry's work on Baby It's Me), closing with the cinematic “I'm In The World”, which would have fit perfectly on the soundtrack of “The Wiz”. Once again proving her extraordinary ability to bring color even to her whispers.

Among the most cohesive and enjoyable albums of the former Supreme, The Boss also marks her return to the Top 20, cementing her new status as queen of the clubs.

By now, Ross is already acting as her own manager. She wants a fresher, more modern sound. Something like the productions of Chic, who are all the rage at Manhattan's legendary Studio 54. She herself meets with Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, entrusting them with the production of the album meant to carry her into the new decade of the '80s. The two take charge of everything: composition, performance and production of the tracks, with the help of their entire longtime crew, from horns to strings to backing vocalists. Et voilà: Diana c'est Chic.

But things don't go quite as planned. While the stories behind the songs flow freely from the chats between Ross and Rodgers, the first listen to the album leaves Diana cold. Because in the meantime disco music had not only run out of steam but had also ended up at the eye of the storm, with episodes like the Disco Demolition Night, the notorious protest held in Chicago on July 12, 1979. Various social and cultural factors were coalescing into that movement which – as Craig Werner explains – "represented a diabolical alliance of funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries" and which "gave respectable voice to some of the ugliest kinds of unspoken racism, sexism and homophobia." The violent anti-disco backlash, combined with other social and radio-industry factors, was changing the face of pop radio in the months following the Disco Demolition Night. And so Frankie Crocker, the influential New York DJ, warned Ross that releasing the album in its original version could even spell "the end of her career." Diana then decides to remix the entire record, entrusting her longtime sound engineer Russ Terrana with the task of cutting the extended instrumental sections and speeding up the tempo of the tracks, while bringing her voice back to the center of the stage.

The remixing of the original tapes is done without Rodgers and Edwards' knowledge, and when they hear the final result of diana (1980), they ask to be immediately removed from the credits, though they never get approval from Motown, leading to a trail of controversy and legal disputes. Hardly the ideal climate for launching the record, which even comes out without a predetermined single: practically unthinkable, by mister Gordy's standards.

The ball passes to radio stations, free to choose for themselves. But from Alaska to Louisiana, across American networks only one track is heard: "Upside Down." There's the single. Ironically, it will put Ross back at the top of the singles charts and drive the album to No. 2 on Billboard, eventually making it the best-selling release of her entire career (10 million copies worldwide). In "Upside Down," though, Chic's touch is unmistakable: a rocket-fueled start with a "Good Times"-style beat, then Diana's voice, more flirtatious than ever, launching straight into the chorus before opening up into an airy bridge, amid booming bass, shivering strings and the embroidery of a relentless guitar that takes over the whole scene in the finale. This is no longer just disco, or funk: it's the Rodgers sound carried into the '80s, the elevator to the paradise of future bestsellers like Michael Jackson's "Thriller" and David Bowie's "Let's Dance." "Upside Down" is the perfect bait to draw new generations of fans to Ross, many of whom are completely unaware of her past with the Supremes. She just wanted a song she could hum along to with her daughters; Rodgers had given her the elixir of eternal youth.

But the Chic leader, through his relentless nightclubbing, had discovered something else: Diana had become an idol of the gay community, to the point that many drag queens dressed like her. "I want the world to know, we need to make it clear," Rodgers sets his mind to. And what better words than "I'm Coming Out" to announce it to everyone? The phrase used in the LGBT community to openly declare one's sexual orientation or gender identity becomes the perfect title for an anthem in waiting. On top of that, there's a luxurious instrumental fabric, with Rodgers' trademark funk guitar, Tony Thompson's syncopated drums which, after the first 20 seconds of tom-toms, lock in with Edwards' bombastic bass in the most relentless of rhythm sections, plus choice trumpet flourishes supporting Diana's sinuous vocal runs, backed in the finale by choruses and counter-melodies. Beyond fulfilling its "political" function, "I'm Coming Out" will be another hit single (No. 13), contributing to the success of diana, alongside the other velvety disco-funk of "My Old Piano," a silly but undeniably catchy song, with its driving beat and its flurry of keys sketching an ode to the old piano with its "international style" and its "eighty-eight key smile".

The rest of the tracklist flows pleasantly between ballads ("Friend To Friend"), injections of groove – the adrenaline-fueled "Have Fun (Again)" – soulful reflections ("Now That You're Gone") and new funky revelries (the nostalgic "Tenderness," the closing "Give Up").

The iconic cover, shot by the celebrated photographer Francesco Scavullo, will only seal what remains the last great LP triumph of the former lead singer of the Supremes. As partial redress to Rodgers & co., in 2003 diana will be reissued in a version featuring the Chic mixes with Ross's original vocal tracks.

Closing out an extraordinarily lucky 1980 is another worldwide hit (No. 9 on Billboard), the poignant ballad "It's My Turn," with music by Masser and lyrics by Carole Bayer Sager, chosen for the closing credits of the eponymous film starring Jill Clayburgh and Michael Douglas, directed by Claudia Weill. A crystalline vocal performance, lyrical yet restrained in tone, enough to dispel the skepticism of those who saw the hits on diana as a less incisive style, overshadowed by the splendor of the production.

I didn't leave Motown because I was angry, disappointed or hurt. I only did it because I was growing and wanted to have full control over my artistic life.

(Diana Ross, "A Legend in Focus")

I'm coming out: fleeing Motown

But now enough with the soul poses, the boss's diktats and the bell-bottom trousers. Increasingly determined to run her career herself, Ross cuts even the last umbilical cord, the deepest one, the one tying her to her Motown home. The final act is yet another movie-soundtrack success, the ultra-sentimental duet "Endless Love," alongside Lionel Richie, for the soundtrack of the eponymous film directed by Franco Zeffirelli, starring Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt. The excess of syrup doesn't spoil the good chemistry between Diana's falsetto and the former Commodores man's deep register, but it's certainly startling that this will become the best-selling single in Motown's glorious history.

Ross, in short, leaves with a bang. Perhaps that's also why the split tastes a little sweeter. Then, of course, there's the taste of money. RCA offers her a seven-year, $20 million contract, with total control over her production. The star has just one pang of conscience: she asks Gordy if he can match the offer. "Impossible," comes the reply. So on May 20, 1981, Diana signs with the new label what is, at the time, the most lucrative record deal ever. Despite two decades of stellar hits that earned millions of dollars, Motown will instead hand her a "severance" of just $250,000.

"I didn't leave Motown because I was angry, disappointed or hurt," she will recall. "I only did it because I was growing as a person and felt it was time to move on. All I wanted was to have full control over myself and my artistic life" (cfr. Sharon Davis, "A Legend in Focus").

A few months later, in October, the first fruit of the new partnership is already ready, Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1981). A somewhat rushed delivery: Ross had committed to RCA to deliver an album by the end of the year, but was left stranded by the Rodgers-Edwards duo, who were busy with Debbie Harry's solo debut. So she ends up producing the album herself and, for the first time ever, writing a song of her own ("Work That Body"). The result is a somewhat uneven and uneven-inspired work, though it's not without new knockout blows, starting with the title track, a sparkling remake of a 1956 Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers rock 'n' roll hit, delivered with a swing feel, polished-to-a-shine brass and another superb vocal performance. But their mark is also left by the hypnotic, deeply sensual soul midtempo "Sweet Surrender", inlaid with strings and a granite-solid bassline, and by the nursery-rhyme-like "Mirror Mirror", in which Diana, a latter-day Wicked Queen, questions her reflection over a bed of lush funky horns ("Tell me Mirror Mirror, on the wall… thought you said you had the answer to it all").

Besides the reprise of "Endless Love", the tracklist is rounded out by a swinging Brenda Lee cover ("Sweet Nothings"), a couple of atmospheric midtempo numbers ("Think I'm In Love", "Two Can Make It"), another catchy dance-pop confection ("It's Never Too Late") and the bizarre ode to aerobics penned by Ross herself ("Work That Body"), the forerunner of every "Physical" to come (ridiculous lyrics included).

Commercially speaking, Why Do Fools Fall in Love kicks off RCA's new era in the best possible way, selling over a million copies (No. 15 on Billboard) and earning platinum status, but it also starts to betray a dangerous reliance on sheer professional craft, something entirely absent from her previous productions and destined to grow in the ones that follow.

By now, though, Diana is already thinking like a manager. She sets up her own production company, Anaid Productions (an anagram of her name), and starts investing in real estate. Meanwhile, she hosts a TV special with Michael Jackson and, at the start of 1982, sings "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Super Bowl XVI and appears on the dance show Soul Train. Her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is just the latest seal on a popularity that seems like it can never end.

Motown, meanwhile, mourns the loss of its golden goose by releasing two compilations, To Love Again (1981) and Diana's Duets (1982).

Navigating alone through a decade full of sonic shifts and changing fashions, Ross looks around for new points of reference. And the first one she can't help but turn to is naturally her protégé, fresh off the stratospheric success of "Off The Wall" and about to ascend the throne of international pop at the end of 1982 with "Thriller". Enter the duet: Diana sprawled on a bed dreaming of muscular hunks, surrounded by Michael's whispers and little shrieks. Written by Jackson himself, the thoroughly horny "Muscles" can be filed squarely under '80s kitsch (video included), but it somehow wins over the public, climbing to No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to its sensual r'n'b groove.

That's the icebreaker duet on Silk Electric (1982), the new album whose cover, painted by Andy Warhol, depicts Ross with a full afro and scarlet lips. Once you unwrap the package, though, not much else remains. "So Close" is a nice 1950s-style doo-wop number, the other track written by Ross ("Fool For Your Love") is actually a full-throttle hard-rock tune that she pulls off with admirable energy, confirming her unmatched versatility (there's even room at the close for the reggae of "I Am Me"), but the album doesn't escape the fatal embrace of trash. The best melody on the record, if anything, is "Still In Love", a power-ballad driven by electric guitar and subtle drumming, which gives Diana the chance for another graceful performance. The robotic drum-beat of "Who", meanwhile, shows Ross perfectly settled into the role of icy dance queen that she probably should have kept building on, following in the footsteps of songs like "Love Hangover" and "Lovin', Livin' And Givin'". It's a shame, though, that the pull of syrupy sentiment takes no prisoners, producing saccharine ballads like "Love Lies" and "In Your Arms".

Overall, it's an overproduced album that sounds irredeemably dated, scattering its few good ideas across a mass of filler that's hard to reassess favorably even in hindsight. Ross gets carried away trying to do everything herself, even co-writing three tracks, but paradoxically loses her own artistic identity along the way.

Red-hot ice

The supreme diva's ever more leonine mane takes up almost the entire cover of her next record, whose title requires no particular effort of originality, Ross (1983), but which is announced as a turn toward pop-rock, aided by the arrival behind the console of Steely Dan guru Gary Katz. But the lead single needs a new dancefloor filler, and "Pieces Of Ice" is exactly what it promises: red-hot ice. A chilly dance muse writhing voluptuously on the podium of a cool club, to a robotic synth beat, while Joe Walsh's electric guitar cuts through the smoke. The video is just as sizzling, with Ross as a sexy panther squeezed into a skimpy red bodysuit. On the charts, though, it won't go higher than No. 31, remaining one of her most underrated gems, next to which the synth-rock of "Up Front" and the jazz-funk of closer "Girls" sound like pale imitations.

Katz brings in Donald Fagen, fresh off the solo success of "The Nightfly", who puts Steely Dan's velvety atmospheres at the service of the former Queen of Soul's refined new vocal turns on "Love Will Make It Right"; those same atmospheres recur on the album's other jazz-pop gem, "Let's Go Up". But Michael McDonald's contribution is also worth noting, as he co-writes with Ed Sanford the opening "That's How You Start Over", a restless r'n'b number driven by horns and incisive piano.

Rejected by the charts (it will stop at No. 32 in the US), Ross is actually one of the best records in the '80s output of Detroit's former wonder girl, and it will be reassessed by later generations, through assorted covers and remixes.

In the meantime, though, Diana is heartened by the massive crowd that gathers at her feet on July 21, 1983, in New York's Central Park: over half a million people for a free concert. Another set of figures to add to her record book. Tied to the concert was a plan to build a playground inside the park funded by TV rights proceeds. But bad weather, which ruined the first of the two nights, prevented enough profit from being made, so the former Supreme ends up paying for the Diana Ross Playground out of her own pocket, inaugurated in the presence of Mayor Ed Koch in September 1986.

Still, the commercial fortunes of her output need rescuing after the unhappy outcome of Ross. Even at the cost of an unlikely duet like the one with Julio Iglesias, the dapper heartthrob of desperate housewives the world over. "All Of You" is the hard-to-swallow price to pay, with a syrupy melody in the typical style of the former Real Madrid goalkeeper. But naturally it becomes an international hit, including in Italy (No. 3), helped along, among other things, by a songwriting credit for Tony Renis.

By contrast, the cover of her next LP Swept Away (1984) marks a conversion — at least visually — to the fashions of the dominant new wave era, with geometric shapes and the diva's tousled hairstyle. Among its grooves, though, there's a heavily backward-looking atmosphere. While the touching tribute to the late Marvin Gaye, "Missing You", is carved by Richie onto a delicate soul canvas with a clear Motown stamp, and the soul-hard-rock crossover of "Swept Away" (penned by Daryl Hall and Sara Allen) inspires one of Ross's most unhinged vocal performances of the mid-'80s, elsewhere a dead calm reigns, ranging from the sticky-sweet pop of "Touch By Touch" to the lackluster remakes of Fontella Bass's "Rescue Me" (1965) and Dylan's "Forever Young", not to mention "It's Your Move", which tries in vain to resurrect the carefree mood of the Supremes.

Less on-the-nose, then, despite its title, is the soft-funk of "Telephone", in which Bernard Edwards tries to push the star's voice to new heights (for instance, when she warbles a sky-high "need" around the 3:30 mark). The oddest experiment of the bunch, though, is "Nobody Makes Me Crazy Like You Do", almost a noir nursery rhyme dipped in electronics, somewhere between Donna Summer and Kate Bush.

The No. 26 chart peak still represents an acceptable waterline, but suspicion that Ross is going through a phase of artistic decline is already starting to creep around the offices of RCA. And the next two albums will do nothing but hasten the end of the partnership.

I’m in the middle of a chain reaction

You give me all the after midnight action

(“Chain Reaction”)

Bee Gees plus Jackson: a chain reaction

Diana's class is beyond question, as confirmed by her performance in the all-star choir of “We Are The World”, the USA for Africa charity anthem that would go on to sell 20 million copies worldwide.

Now, though, she needs a new horse to back. And who better than the man who, after setting the charts ablaze with Saturday Night Fever, had revived the fortunes of two thoroughbreds of American song, Barbra Streisand (“Guilty”) and Dionne Warwick (“Heartbreaker”)? Barry Gibb, moreover, had proven remarkably eclectic, even pushing the country duet of Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton (“Islands In The Stream”) up the charts. News that Diana Ross and the mastermind of the Bee Gees were collaborating on a new record thrills their respective fan bases, further galvanized by the involvement of Michael Jackson on the planned first single. “Eaten Alive”, however, turns out to be a dud: the typically hyperactive Jackson-style beat isn't enough to hold together a track that is, in every respect, a mess, from Ross's lackluster vocal performance, completely smothered by Gibb's falsetto and Jacko's yelps, to a bland refrain in which the song simply collapses. As so often happens, the union of three pop superstars yields less than half the sum of their talents. A wasted opportunity, in short.

Things fare better, if anything, with the other single, “Chain Reaction”, which manages, for a moment, to pull off the magic alchemy of “The Supremes meet Bee Gees”, thanks to a driving rhythm and an airy chorus in which Gibb's euphoric falsetto blends nicely with Diana's crystalline vocals. It will break through in the UK, even reaching No. 1, while in the US it won't get past No. 66 on the Billboard chart.

But overall, the album Eaten Alive (1985) – starting with its painfully tacky cover of Ross draped in pearl chains atop a stuffed tiger – falls short of expectations. In trying to adapt to the unmistakable Bee Gees-style falsetto, Diana seems to lose her footing, misplacing the soulful touch that had always set her apart. She ends up reduced to a near-voiceless whisper (“Oh Teacher”, “More And More”), mimicking the style of a “How Deep Is Your Love” (the not-unworthy ballad “I'm Watching You”), breathlessly chasing Gibb through rock-edged rough patches (“Crime Of Passion”), or echoing Warwick's “Heartbreaker” (the chorus of “Experience”).

In short, hoping she never reads this, we have to admit that Ross's union with Gibb turned out worse than that of her longtime rival Streisand, who at least came away with two memorable ballads (“Guilty” and “Woman In Love”). Meanwhile, though, Diana really does get married, for the second time, in Geneva, to Norwegian shipping magnate Arne Naess (February 1, 1986).

In the meantime, her protégé and would-be lover Michael Jackson will get people talking about her again with the song “Dirty Diana” (from “Bad”, 1987), reviving the legend of his supposed initiation into the pleasures of sex at the hands of his muse, even though the lyrics seem to clearly refer to a groupie.

Closing out her seven-year run under the RCA banner is a collection of R&B, contemporary pop and neo-soul classics titled Red Hot Rhythm & Blues (1987), put together alongside studio guru Tom Dowd, producer and sound engineer for Rod Stewart, Chicago, Eagles, Aretha Franklin and many others. While the new single “Dirty Looks” offers little more than another workmanlike R&B sketch, and the Luther Vandross-penned ballad (“It's Hard For Me To Say”) adds yet another dose of trademark smoothness to the label's melodic arsenal, the covers of classics by the Bobbettes (“Mr. Lee”), Jackie Ross (“Selfish One”), Etta James (“Tell Mama”) and the Drifters (“There Goes My Baby”) back up the impression of a performer in great form, fully recovered from the uncertainties of the previous album.

The gem of the album, however, is the “Summertime” inspired by the Gershwin standard, courtesy of the Leonard Cohen-Sharon Robinson duo, which lands in Diana's lap on a silver platter and which she elevates with a spine-tingling performance, floating her angelic soprano over an orchestration that almost seems to mimic the waves of the sea through the flow of strings and horns, for a mournful ode to summer.

And so closes – with this almost overly refined melange of songs that won't climb past No. 73, and with a touch of melancholy – the RCA chapter. Three gold records out of six, with six Top 20 pop singles and nine Top 20 R&B singles. A tally certainly not comparable to the glories of the Motown era (1961-1981), but one that would still make the fortune of any artist. Now, though, it's time to go home.

Diana and I are the same kind of person. She's always wanted what I wanted. We both knew it well and always made sure our personal relationship wouldn't affect all of that.

(Berry Gordy)

Homecoming

With her relationship with RCA over, Ross contacts Gordy to plan a grand return to her old label. But the boss is tired and, despite his former protégé's efforts to dissuade him, has already decided to sell the label to MCA Records (later acquired by Polygram in 1994 and then by Universal Music Group). Gordy, however, retains important publishing rights and manages to secure Diana's return to Motown on the condition that she also become a shareholder in the company. Because where the love of his life was concerned, there had always been a precise alignment of goals: “Diana and I are the same kind of person. We've always wanted the same things, and we made sure our romantic relationship never got in the way of that.”

But despite the massive promotional campaign, the homecoming album Workin' Overtime (1989) turns out to be a failure on every front. Granted, its gestation wasn't easy: Diana had two more children, Ross and Evan, and spent most of her time at home. "I was out of work for a year," she would tell David Nathan in "The Soulful Divas" — "I spent a lot of time watching BET on TV (Black Entertainment Television, ed.) and singing hip-hop songs with the kids. And, you know, I'm someone who loves taking risks...". And the risk, in this case, is choosing to make a record built around a youthful strain of hip-hop that was definitely not her forte. Mindful of the success of her last genuine hits ("Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out"), Ross brings Nile Rodgers back in to produce. But this time it's mission impossible.

In a black leather jacket and ripped jeans, Ross attempts to relaunch herself as an improbable new urban heroine in the age of New Jack Swing, but ends up coming across like a chloroformed Janet Jackson. Tracks like the title track, "Say We Can" and "Take The Bitter With The Sweet" find her straining to whisper behind a wall of blunt beats, losing along the way the very sheen of her voice and never landing on an original rhythmic or melodic idea. In the end, what survives are the halfway-house experiments: "Bottom Line", where she at least recovers a warmer, more sensual register; "This House", where strings and guitars return to wrap around her soul lady crooning; and above all the trance-house of "Paradise", which puts her back on the dancefloor for a new pounding club tune, though without recapturing the vocal grit of her classic club songs. The attempt is repeated, with even less conviction, on the following "Keep On (Dancin')".

The rest of the tracklist slips by without a single spark, leaving the impression of a confused, sloppily assembled album in which Ross never manages to find the center of gravity for her performances. A flop confirmed by the charts too, where it would register the lowest placements of her solo career.

To recoup some ground, EMI, who distributed her in the UK, decided to bring her Supremes hits and her solo-career singles back into the spotlight in live form. But comparing the versions on this Greatest Hits Live (1989) with those on the classic An Evening With Diana Ross from twelve years earlier is, frankly, a rather unflattering exercise.

Two years later comes The Force Behind The Power (1991), for which a whole team of producers is brought in, including Stevie Wonder, Al B. Sure!, James Anthony Carmichael and Peter Asher. This time, at least, there's a single to turn the tide: the power-ballad "When You Tell Me That You Love Me" climbs to No. 2 on the UK chart and even grazes the US R&B Top 40, though it amounts to little more than a by-the-numbers rehash of a hyper-romantic, riskily soporific approach — one soon to be overtaken by her supposed imitators Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey, who would actually go on to mine precisely the least interesting, least original side of her style.

The Force Behind the Power is a quality the Iron Lady of Detroit knows well, but this certainly isn't where she manages to express it, despite the lavish production and the choral sweep of the title track. At best, she coasts competently through easy-going midtempo numbers ("Change Of Heart"), finger-snapping Supremes-era nostalgia ("Battlefield"), heartfelt covers (a tear-jerking take on Wonder's "Blame It On The Sun"), smooth R&B duets ("No Matter What You Do", alongside Al B. Sure!), mannered Sade-style smooth-jazz exercises ("Heavy Weather") and Streisand-esque ballads up for grabs, like "Heart (Don't Change My Mind)".

In America it would be yet another flop, but in Britain (No. 11) it helped boost the supreme Diva's stock, prompting her to take her "Here and Now" tour around the world for two years.

Confirming her special bond with the UK, in 1991 Diana also performs again before Queen Elizabeth. Then, two years later, she enters the Guinness Book of Records with great fanfare as "the most successful female artist of all time", on the strength of her number of chart entries, both singles and albums, in the UK and the US (in Britain alone, she has earned 28 Silver Discs, 18 Gold Discs and 8 Platinum Discs).

Having abandoned any temptation to compete with the new young phenomena in black music, Ross returns to her old love for jazz, picking up the thread left hanging by the Holiday-esque transformation of Lady Sings The Blues and partly resumed in the "An Evening" recital: Stolen Moments: The Lady Sings... Jazz And Blues (1993) is the recording of an evening at New York's Ritz Theatre, in which Diana, surrounded by jazz heavyweights like Roy Hargrove, Ron Carter, Jon Faddis and Urbie Greene, tackles a string of immortal standards and classics, from Billie Holiday's "Fine And Mellow" to George and Ira Gershwin's "The Man I Love", by way of Harry M. Woods' "What A Little Moonlight Can Do" and Porter Grainger and Everett Robbins' "Ain't Nobody's Business".

Even bolder — if not outright reckless — is that same year's experiment alongside tenors Plácido Domingo and José Carreras for the Christmas-carol collection Christmas In Vienna (1993), recorded at the Rathaus in the Austrian capital with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Gumpoldskirch Boys Choir ensemble. The following collection, A Very Special Season (1994), sticks to a more accessible repertoire of pop Christmas songs, and is followed by yet another Christmas-themed record, Making Spirits Bright (1994), accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra.

Diana also launches a parallel career as a children's author, publishing the picture book "When You Dream" (1993), accompanied by a mini-CD. Nor does she neglect film: having been awarded a new star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (this time as Diana Ross & The Supremes), she appears in the TV movie "Out of Darkness", which earns her a Golden Globe nomination.

Musically, though, the most interesting work of the period is a collection of remixes of her dance classics by some of the era's most important DJs and electronic producers, from David Morales to Frankie Knuckles, from Satoshi Tomie to Maurice Joshua. Updated to the technological sound of the '90s, the dancefloor gems of Diana Extended: The Remixes (1994) shine with all their seductive brightness, from a hypnotic "Love Hangover" (Knuckles) to the sensual house of "Upside Down" (Satoshi Tomie & David Morales Mix).

I've always been someone who loves taking risks. Now I need a new beginning.

(Diana Ross at the Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award, 1995)

A New Beginning

With the collections, concerts and Christmas albums now behind her, Diana Ross bursts back onto the scene with a new album of original material for Motown, Take Me Higher (1995), released four years after its predecessor. It's a period of rapid change: hip-hop is going mainstream, singers like Mariah Carey and boy bands like the Backstreet Boys dominate the charts. Diana Ross knows she needs to reinvent herself and, upon accepting the Soul Train Lifetime Achievement Award, announces "a new beginning" for her career, bringing in younger artists for her next album. And it's precisely a sense of renewed freshness and energy that comes through from the very first notes of the title track, written by Narada Michael Walden, one of the album's urban producers, alongside Brenda Russell and Jon-John and the Boom Brothers (Babyface). Ross sings as if liberated, freed from the forced clichés that had hampered her recent records, rediscovering her taste for dance music that had inspired her most genuine club classics and reclaiming the corresponding charts too (No. 1 on Billboard's Hot Dance Music). The midtempo groove of "If You're Not Gonna Love Me Right" has a very cool, swinging drive that recalls certain contemporary Lisa Stansfield hits; the tender "Let Somebody Know" (Brenda Russell) evokes the hazier "smooth" atmospheres of Sade and Anita Baker, while velvety arrangements of Spanish guitar, piano and brushed drums adorn the night-club ballad "I Never Loved A Man Before", born from the pairing of two songwriters who had made Diana's fortune before, Gerry Goffin and Tom Snow, respectively behind "Theme From Mahogany" and "Gettin' Ready For Love". Ross manages to capture a mature, sophisticated tone that's never old-fashioned, as on the enveloping ballad "Gone", where her virtuosic runs intertwine with a piano melody line and delicate layers of violins, violas and cello, or on the sophisticated jazz torch song "I Thought That We Were Still In Love", brushed with piano and sax around her celestial soprano.

Elsewhere, though, the album gets lost in sounds that are a bit too stereotyped and artificially sexy, in line with certain Babyface productions ("Keep It Right There", "Don't Stop"), or in glossy, spineless ballads ("Voice Of The Heart", "Only Love Can Conquer All"), before finding its lost verve again on a lush cover of the eternal "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor, with remixes courtesy of Steve Rodway of Motiv8 and Hex Hector.

Overall, though, Take Me Higher is Diana Ross's best album of the '90s, the one that manages to fit her with a more honest and credible identity, dropping youthful pretensions while at the same time giving her classic style – that of a refined late-night-show chanteuse – a more modern sound. It won't, however, manage to put her back on the charts in the United States, despite the huge live TV spot from her Super Bowl appearance (she had previously performed in Chicago at the opening ceremony of the 1994 USA World Cup, and a year later at the Rugby League final between Australia and England at Wembley Stadium in London).

By now Diana is followed much more abroad (especially in the UK) than at home, where she even gets prudish criticism for reaching a hand toward rapper Lil' Kim's cleavage at the 1999 MTV Awards. But she presses on regardless, racking up further awards, such as the Songwriter Hall of Fame Hitmaker Award, and producing the TV movie "Double Platinum" [Il prezzo della gloria], in which she plays Olivia, a successful singer grappling with a delicate relationship with the daughter she had abandoned twenty years earlier.

On top of that, she keeps churning out successful TV specials through her production company, Anaid.

On the musical front, meanwhile, after the collection of love songs Voice Of Love/A Gift Of Love (1996), which also features the famous Michael Jackson song "You Are Not Alone" (written by R. Kelly), the time comes to close the second chapter with Motown as well. Not exactly a memorable swan song, Every Day Is A New Day (1999) comes out following the TV movie "Double Platinum", starring Diana Ross and actress/singer/model Brandy Norwood, recycling a few songs from its soundtrack. The result is a mix of adult soul, dance, R&B and ballads, largely handled by the legendary Arif Mardin (Aretha Franklin, Chaka Khan, Bette Midler) and by his sister Malik Pendleton (Mary J. Blige, SWV, Zhane).

It will be remembered above all for the sprawling Afro-flavored "He Lives In You", taken from the Disney film "The Lion King 2" and the related Broadway musical, with its mixed English-Zulu lyrics and a killer violin solo by Karen Briggs, and for the lovely hypnotic groove of "Not Over You Yet", on which Ross lays down one of her classic sensual, hushed-voice performances, underpinned by metallic beats.

The rest slips by harmlessly, between facile ballads worthy of the mushiest Michael Jackson ("Love Is All That Matters", "Someone That You Loved Before", both courtesy of Diane Warren), breathless dance numbers (the title track), nostalgic soul tailor-made for easy-listening radio ("Sugarfree") and feel-good gospel ("Hope Is An Open Window", co-written by Ross herself).

Not a happy ending, then, for the nearly thirty-year love story between Diana and Motown, by now light years removed from the glories of the Gordy era. Even sadder, though, will be the epilogue of Ross's marriage to Næss: after their $500 million divorce in 1999, the Norwegian billionaire would die during a climb in the Franschhoek mountains in South Africa in 2004. Two years earlier, the ex-Supreme had been caught drunk driving in Tucson, Arizona, spending two days in a jail cell, and was later admitted to the Promises drug and alcohol rehab center in Malibu, California, to "deal with some personal issues".

But don't go thinking of a depressed or struggling Diana. The girl who left the Detroit ghetto with a suitcase full of dreams still knows how to climb the highest mountains, even if her career has for years essentially boiled down to a nostalgic rewind of her past legend. And her face remains a symbol of unchanged splendor, as shown by the fact that in 2005 one of the Estée Lauder Companies brands, Mac Cosmetics, chose her as the beauty icon for a new cosmetics line. A few weeks later, she would also receive honorary citizenship of Paris, from the hands of mayor Bertrand Delanoë.

The lady in Blue

But above all, it's time to refresh some memories. Thus, within the span of two years, two albums that had stayed in the drawer during her golden years finally see the light of day: first There's A Place For Us (2004) by the Supremes, which digs out of the dust a handful of show tunes and pop standards the group recorded in 1965; then, above all, Blue (2006), the album that in 1972 was meant to become the sequel to Lady Sings The Blues, but which Gordy instead decided to shelve in favor of the new pop project Touch Me In The Morning. "I found those reels mixed in haphazardly among dozens of Marvin Gaye tapes, it took me two seconds to realize what I had in my hands", the incredulous producer George Solomon would later reveal, after discovering the material in the Motown archives in 1990.

It's a revelation: the ghost of Billie Holiday comes back to life in the slender girl from the Detroit ghetto, perfectly at ease amid jazz standards and the noble scores of masters like Cole Porter and George Gershwin. Arranged by Gil Askey and performed by many musicians who had played with Billie (starting with Harry "Sweets" Edison, the trumpet on "Torching"), the songs on Blue bear witness to Diana's deep immersion in the world she perhaps felt closest to her spirit, even though throngs of record executives had always talked her into singing something else.

Nearly fifty years after the Supremes' debut, the world can finally hear Ross again at the peak of her interpretive art, soaring lightly through timeless classics – from "What A Difference A Day Makes" to "I Loves You, Porgy", from "You've Changed" to "Ain't Nobody's Business" – with an intensity and a range of vocal shadings absent from much of her recent work.

Fans will be rubbing their ears in disbelief, driving Blue to No. 2 on the Billboard jazz chart.

Buoyed by the success, Ross returns to release a new album after seven years, I Love You (2006), unveiling sixteen love songs, including "I Want You" (written by her brother, Arthur "T-Boy" Ross, who died in 1996), the splendid Harry Nilsson song "Remember", a flawless "The Look Of Love" (surely, Burt, Diana deserved one of your gifts too?), a hushed "I Will" (The Beatles), the inevitable "Only You" by The Platters, a poignant "You Are So Beautiful" (Billy Preston), and a disorienting uptempo version of "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", alongside Brian May of Queen.

Unexpectedly, the album puts her back on the charts in America (No. 32), reaching No. 60 in her "second home" Britain, helped along by a successful world tour that once again finds her an absolute showstopper on stage with her sophisticated performances and whirlwind costume changes ("they're a mirror of the soul", she would explain): red lace, yellow crinoline, lamé tunics, black sheath dresses, feathers, sequins, and even a purple fur coat. A real obsession, this thing about clothes, around which legends have sprung up, like the one told by Massimo Cotto according to which Ross burst into desperate tears when she saw the stage costumes for "Lady Sings The Blues" because they were "too ugly". Nor was she consoled by the director's reassurances that those were in fact the very clothes worn by Lady Day. "I deserve the best", Diana insisted. Then an executive tried to play his trump card: "Think of Janis Joplin, she sang dressed in rags, yet she enchanted everyone". At that, she stopped crying and gave him a thoughtful look: "Who's Janis Joplin?" (cf. "Rock Bazar Volume Secondo").

I've never liked being just one person. I'm a woman who wears different masks.

(Diana Ross)

Yes she can

Meanwhile, more accolades keep pouring in: the Bet Lifetime Achievement Award and the John F. Kennedy award (2007), followed five years later by the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Then, in 2016, the most moving honor of all: it's Barack Obama himself, the first Black president, who places the Presidential Medal of Freedom around her neck; Diana flashes her dazzling smile, cracks jokes, but then breaks down in tears. From the ghettos of Detroit to the White House, it's almost the crowning achievement of a lifelong dream. With just one regret: "The fact that my mother never got to see my success."

The record industry, meanwhile, takes care of clearing out the warehouse too, digging up the children's song collection To The Baby (2010), attached to the expanded edition reissue of Touch Me In The Morning. A curious record, featuring previously unreleased covers of Michael Jackson ("Got To Be There") and Roberta Flack ("First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"), as well as the title track written by Diana's brother, Arthur "T-Boy" Ross. Then the soundtrack of the old musical "The Wiz" gets dusted off (Diana Ross Sings Songs From The Wiz, 2015).

2021 marks her return to a studio album of new material, a full 23 years after Every Day Is A New Day (1999). The seventy-seven-year-old Diana looks like a forty-year-old on the cover of Thank You (2021), and she even breaks into dance on the sparkling title track, also released as the lead single, on the latin-disco groove of "Let's Do It" and on the glossier "If The World Just Danced", with a Jackson-esque aftertaste that also surfaces in the pop melodies of "All Is Well". But of course there's no shortage of syrupy ballads, like the romantic "Time To Call" and "Just In Case", on which the former Supreme lets her most flexible, velvety tones glide, complete with a tribute to her friend Michael Jackson ("The Answer's Always Love") and a few jazzy touches here and there ("Count On Me"). But perhaps the best on this front is that sinuous "All Is Well", which also came with a music video directed by Amanda Demme in collaboration with Diana's sons, Evan Ross (producer) and Ross Naess (cinematography).

Recorded at her home studio, Thank You boasts a sizeable team of guests: Jack Antonoff, Troy Miller, Triangle Park, Spike Stent, Prince Charlez, Amy Wadge, Neff-U, Freddie Wexler, Jimmy Napes, Tayla Parx, Fred White and Nathanial Ledgewick.

Nothing memorable, but a display of pride and class, as if to reassert her seniority over a new generation of young soul sisters.

The spectre of the Supremes also cyclically resurfaces in Diana's career. In 2000, the idea for the "Return to Love tour" is born, dedicated to the trio's songs. But the two other original members, Mary Wilson and Cindy Birdsong, turn down the offer due to the huge pay disparity (3 million dollars for Wilson, one for Birdsong, and a full 20 for Diana), as well as relations that were never exactly idyllic, marked by rivalry, unauthorized biographies and venomous revelations. The former lead singer is thus forced to bring in Scherrie Payne and Lynda Laurence, who joined the Motown group after her departure. But it will be a flop, cut short with 14 shows cancelled. "A real shame, to me it's the same whether I play in front of ten people or ten thousand," she will bitterly conclude (though it's hard to say how sincerely).

She'll try again with greater success in 2014, a freshly-turned seventy-year-old, bringing Payne and Laurence back on the road across America with the "In the Name of Love" tour, closed out by a cult performance on the stage of the Montreal jazz festival, alongside artists such as Rufus Wainwright, Bobby McFerrin, Keith Jarrett and Michael Bublé.

And proof that failures have been a rare exception in her career comes from her net worth, estimated at around 250 million dollars.

Meanwhile, the mainstream scene has been overrun by legions of her heirs, real or presumed — from Alicia Keys to Missy Elliott, from Queen Latifah to Mary J. Blige, all the way to Beyoncé and Rihanna (perhaps the most credible of the bunch) — while soul-pop-r'n'b, once a device devised by Motown to win over white audiences, has become a multiracial mass language, used indiscriminately by Black and white artists alike to top the charts. But few, probably, remember that it was precisely her who was the ace played on the global market to upend genre barriers and entrenched social structures. The woman of total black/white crossover, able to bear the weight of at least three or four generational shifts without ever losing her lively character or her unshakeable aplomb along the way: an iron fist in a velvet glove. Perhaps this is exactly why some find her too cold, almost inhuman in her absolute self-control, which has always been the fruit of a sharp self-awareness, of an ability to put herself on the line without hesitation, nor, all things considered, too many scruples. For her, after all, shape-shifting has always been the only possible way of life: "I've never liked being just one person," she'll explain, "I'm a woman who wears different masks, depending on the occasion: I can be a diva, a singer, an actress. The most important role, though, is that of mother."

So what makes Diana Ross truly unique? Not only, and not so much, her extreme flexibility as a "vocal jukebox", capable of singing virtually any song in any genre. That trait, if anything, has simply been exploited by the music industry to cash in on her myth through an endless stream of releases, not all of them essential. Diana isn't just the perfect cover-woman, she's a performer with an unmistakable vocal timbre and personality. Her greatest historical achievements are having brought the most "soulful" intensity of Black music into the pop mainstream, having shaped her soprano to fit the lightweight song format without sacrificing an ounce of her refinement, and having poured heart and soul into dozens of stellar tracks, the product of the work of America's finest musical and production minds. If we had to point to some of the most memorable incarnations of this incomparable shape-shifter of popular music, we could never forget the girl in black yé-yé style from the Supremes, the lady of the blues who brought new light to the treasures of Billie Holiday, the magnificent Motown-style soul performer, the magnetic queen of disco who filled dancefloors between the 70s and 80s, the elegant chanteuse of high-class ballads. She will forever remain the supreme diva, the glamour icon, the star behind all those unreachable records set by a woman, records that will keep capturing, in numbers, the snapshot of a legend.

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