No preteen has ever sung as credibly about eternal devotion as Michael Jackson, his performance beginning with a calm childlike sweetness that he ruptures boldly with an adult rasp. But it was the brothers' first ballad that would become the label's all-time best-seller, retaining that title for more than a decade. When the Jacksons followed their 1969 debut 'I Want You Back' with the equally high-energy delights 'ABC' and 'The Love You Save,' their ebullience seemed boundless, a new font of Motown optimism for a new decade.

Bobby Byrd plays hype man in this magically off-the-cuff rearrangement of the horn-heavy James Brown Orchestra's 'Give It Up or Turnit a Loose.' His young, hungry and economical new band, the J.B.'s, featured brothers Bootsy and Catfish Collins on bass and guitar, respectively, and Jabo Starks on drums. James Brown got in on the libidinous free-for-all early with a landmark single that promoted his, er, endurance and vitality with a simple euphoric groove. The post-birth control and pre-AIDS window of opportunity saw the Sixties' utopian fantasies elaborated into hitherto unimagined new possibilities. The Seventies was quite possibly the Western world's sexiest decade. James Brown, “Get Up (I Feel Like Being a) Sex Machine” (1970).

1970s soft rock songs