It's the Same Old Song

"It's the Same Old Song" is a 1965 hit song recorded by The Four Tops for the Motown label. Written and produced by Motown's main production team Holland-Dozier-Holland, the song is today one of The Tops' signiture songs, and was notably created--from initial concept to commercial release--in exactly 24 hours.

After "I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" hit #1 in June of 1965, The Four Tops' former label Columbia Records, wanting to cash in on the group's success, put out a vaulted recording the group had done for their label in the early 1960s as a single. A perturbed Berry Gordy ordered that a new Four Tops single had to be released within a day's time.

At 3 o' clock that afternoon, the Holland brothers and Lamont Dozier penned "It's the Same Old Song"; by 5 P.M., The Tops had recorded the song and mixing began. The engineering team worked around the clock perfecting the single's mix and making hand-cut vinyl records so that Berry Gordy's sister Esther in the Artist Development department could critique them and select the best ones for single release. By 3 P.M. the next day, 1500 copies of "It's the Same Song" had been delivered to radio DJs across the country, and the song eventually made it to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

Credits

• Lead vocals by Levi Stubbs
• Background Vocals by Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Lawrence Payton, and The Andantes: Jackie Hicks, Marlene Barrow, and Louvain Demps
• Instrumentation by The Funk Brothers

• Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier, and Edward Holland, Jr.
• Produced by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier

References

• Dennis, Robert (1998). Our Motown Recording Heritage, Part 3: Emergency Release. Recordingeq.com.