diana ross

The Ting Tings, ‘That’s Not My Name’

As the 1969 Top 20 hobbles to a thrilling conclusion, we’re hop-skip-jumping all the way to the present and a record that Junior went loopy for when it appeared on one of those new-fangled MTV channels last week. We’re even a bit slow off the mark here, as it’s been toppled from an unlikely chart summit by hit machine Rihanna, but it’s still the breakthrough smash of the year – a grand departure from its achingly hip, limited 2007 run.

You’ve heard the comparisons – Blondie (yes, the cool-eyed Katie White is indeed blonde and, in a slightly darkened room, stunning), ‘Mickey’ (the star-jumping rhythm and lairy rap-song straight off Toni Basil’s much mis-(or not)-construed 1982 chartbuster), The Knack’s ‘My Sharona’ (that rhythm again, really, also massaged for Girls Aloud’s ‘No Good Advice’) – but, like the best pop puffery, ‘That’s Not My Name’ blends influences to form a monster that stomps, jerks, twitters and rocks in its own nation-enslaving way.

We’re mad for it right now, pure victims of hype if you see things through those spectacles. Sometimes there’s no hype without fire. As the record builds to its multi-layered, full-rocking coda, Junior’s reaction is a spinning, leaping, head-shaking frug from dining room to living room – pop star in infancy.

And while we’re sojourning in 2008, here are some of her other recent pop moments:

– “She’s got hair like me” to Diana Ross gamely keeping it all together in the ‘Chain Reaction’ video
– “Black and gold, black and gold, black and gold – that’s your favourite, Daddy” (not sure who’s feeding her these lies)
– Sticking her hand in the washing machine for the nth time one day, she’s told to leave it alone before defiantly reaching in again and pulling out the new Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan album

For Junior, music is everywhere.

[9] Diana Ross & The Supremes, ‘Someday We’ll Be Together’

Heart-stopping, heart-rending and band-rending, the final single from Diana Ross & The Supremes doesn’t even feature The Supremes. Motown boss Berry Gordy had it pegged as Ross’s first solo single, first nabbing it from under the noses of Junior Walker & The All-Stars, then using the track that original writer Johnny Bristol had patched together with a couple of session singers to underpin Ross’s seductive vocal. Who was going to argue?

It’s a sensitive, swinging arrangement that has Junior swaying. Our girl has a distinct sense of rhythm, and is starting to respond to records in conspicuously different ways. Her hips click into the rising, plucked guitar signature and she glides with the embracing strings.

‘Someday…’ has no conventional chorus, only a release as Ross bursts to tell what she believes. It can be taken as a promise that the band will reunite one day, but she sure as hell had no intention of that. The Queen of Motown didn’t want any baggage weighing her down.