The Four Tops: Changing Times - 1970


This next album from the now-aware foursome -

- featuring the hidden social comment of In These Changing Times*, Just Seven Numbers (Can Straighten Out My Life), the impressive Right Before My Eyes, the Chairmen Of The Board-ish I Almost Had Her (But She Got Away), Try To Remember (before Gladys Knight's version) and a bit of proper Motown cheese in a cover of Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head. 

While Motown was now heading in the direction of serious, issue-driven albums from the likes of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder, The Temptations and The Undisputed Truth, The Four Tops were still hanging on in there as a chart pop band as well as trying to embrace the new zeitgeist. They made a good job of that on this excellent album.

* Social comment was a big thing in 1971, particularly at Motown. Here the Four Tops get in on the act with In These Changing Times with a lush, smooth ballad that manages to merge a lyric about change with romantic failure. It was not a chart success, comparatively, but despite that, Levi Stubbs' vocal is a really strong one.

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