I recently had some down time and decided to pick up some records I hadn’t listened to in ages. The Complete Motown #1s Box was a great place to start. Killer songs, great arrangements and beyond stellar performances.

What I noticed on many of these #1 records was that there were noticeable “mistakes”. Some were in engineering, some in the musicality. There were distorted snare drums, out-of-tune harmonies, flubbed guitar strums and out-of-time tambourines. And we’re talking about accomplished, renowned artists such as Stevie Wonder, The Contours, Martha and the Vandellas, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes and The Temptations. Pretty heavy hitters. Yet they all had minor mistakes in there that I could pick up even with my rinky-dink iPod headphones. But it didn’t matter. The song was still strong and cut through any imprecision.

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