The Jackson 5 - Skywriter/Get It Together

Skywriter (1973) is the most rote of the 10 Jackson 5 albums on Motown. Even a growling clavinet on several tracks can't save the cleanly produced but bland songs, and the overall effect is of a half-price sale at Motown's publishing companies. At best, "The Boogie Man" is a dry run for Michael's "Thriller," and Shirley Partridge would've laughed "World of Sunshine" out of the room. Two soggily "inspirational" singles, "Corner of the Sky" and "Hallelujah Day," are perhaps the lowest points, though. Get It Together, from later in the year, shows far more spark. Aside from introducing "Dancing Machine," it offers a good line in extended workouts like "Mama I Gotta Brand New Thing (Don't Say No)" and a remake of the Temptations' "Hum Along and Dance" that Kurtis Blow's History of Rap cites as an early breakbeat classic. One of this CD's three bonus tracks, a rare version of the Holland-Dozier-Holland nugget "Love's Gone Bad," would've been the best thing on the original Skywriter, had it not gone straight into the vault. --Rickey Wright Amazon.com

tight double collection

this is a double set on one collection that has alot of bumping Jams by the first family of Music the Jackson 5. strong Production and Grooves that still are finger snapping Jams that still pack a strong punch. Michael Jackson vocally sounds incredible on these songs which cover a wide range of styles and themes. good stuff. November 3, 2007

The Turning Point...

Alot of reviewers have questioned this album,but that didn't stop me from buying the last double album/single cd set and adding it to my collection. But before I purchased this album,i heard a song on it called "I Can't Quit Your Love" and what suprised me the most about that song was Marlon Jackson's part in the bridge. So i had to get this album,and to my suprise,my boy Marlon had more parts. So i guess you can say i bought this set just to hear Marlon Jackson do some lead numbers. Let's review shall we. Skywriter was supposed to be the re-up album for the boys to go to the top of the charts again. Fortunately,they almost did with "I Can't Quit Your Love". This song has that signature disco drum pattern and Michael seems to be in rare form in this song as he "HA!" and "HO!!" in most of the song. Another single that got my attention was "Corner of the Sky",which i really can relate to and i love singing it. "Uppermost" is a pretty good song and i like how all five of the brothers sound eventhough it's Mike on lead vocals. The rest of the songs you all can jump over and go straight into another one of my favorite J5 songs,"Get It Together" (i fell in love with this song from the "Michael Jackson & The Jackson 5 18 Greatest Hits" album). Holding on to that same disco feeling,courtesy of the one and only Stevie Wonder,this particular song is a great way to start off an album...but soon afterwards,the brothers take it a level higher as they all take turns on "Hum Along and Dance". Pretty good and lenghty song,and it's nice to hear Jackie Jackson and Tito Jackson on this song. Right afterwards comes my top favorite song on the G.I.T. album,"Mama,Got A Brand New Thing (Don't Say No)". Once again,all of the brothers do their thing,but the biggest story here on this song is all of Marlon Jackson's parts - "First Class everywhere we go,just give me a chance to do my thing/[Chorus]/Got it burning down deep inside/I wanna see my face in ???/Just please please please,let me go!/I can see it now,Champaygne and cavier/A black limousine chauffered car/Trips all around the world/And I have my choice of any girl/[Michael,Jermaine,and Jackie sing]/Mom there ain't nothing that we can't buy/Have a little faith in me!!" that's my absolute favorite part of the song. That boy could sing!! -Ahem- anyway,after that song is over with,Michael jumps back into the driver's seat with another classic,"Too Late To Change The Time". A very good song with a good message to back it up. And then comes the one that started it all - Dancing Machine (the original is much better than the remix cause of the intro and the outro). This was the one song that I know how to do one of Michael's robot routines on (remember the rainbow color outfits they wore and Mike and Jermaine sporting permed-n-curled afros? hahaha!) After "Dancing Machine" comes "Pride And Joy" which is pretty good in my opinion and the final and best bonus cut out of the entire collection,"Love Is The Thing You Need",which is actually where Michael sounds his best at this point before the group records "All I Do Is Think Of You" from the Moving Violation album. Everyone says these two albums were their worst...survey says...[X]!!! Get some soul in your system and just dance along. October 19, 2005

The J-5's "brand new thing"

SKYWRITER and GET IT TOGETHER are two albums that are as different as day and night. SKYWRITER still boasted some of the Jackson 5's "bubble gum" soul sound that made them famous, yet the boys were young men by early 1973. The music wasn't lacking in quality, but it seemed like Motown had put the brothers into a box with material about teeny-bopper love and the sort, and didn't want them to break out of it. Plus, that year, the solo careers of Michael and Jermaine were already underway, with older brother Jackie next to make a splash with his debut.

So SKYWRITER was recorded at a time when the brothers' popularity was starting to wane - they still had hits, but nothing like the explosive material that they recorded when they first arrived at Motown. You hear some songs that let you know that the guys are growing up and maturing, but then you're hit with others that want to remind you that they were once a kiddie group, so you could correctly call SKYWRITER the group's "growing pains" album. A lot of this material is kind of bland, very pop-oriented ("World of Sunshine", "Ooh, I'd Love To Be With You" for example). It's surprising that Motown let this happen to one of their most exciting and popular acts. The biggest hit from this album was a bouncy tune from a Motown-produced Broadway musical called "Pippin": "Corner of the Sky", which peaked at #9 (R&B) and #18 (Pop). The song wasn't bad - I used to love that song when I was a kid - but it obviously lacked the energy of those earlier J-5 hits. SKYWRITER does have some good moments, though: the title song; of course, "Corner of the Sky", "Touch", an excellent amd sensual remake of a Supremes song; "I Can't Quit Your Love", "Uppermost" and "You Made Me What I Am". But somehow, while you're listening, you get the feeling that the boys are itching to move past this stuff, and what was to follow was a must-needed change for them.

Enter the "brand new thing". GET IT TOGETHER is my favorite (and undeniably the better) of the two albums presented here - the five star rating is for THIS album. Released in late 1973, GIT brought the J-5 where they wanted and needed to be: leaving the bubble gum sound behind and into some really funky territory. With raw, extended dance tracks and exciting vocal arrangements, it kind of reminds you of the metamorphosis that the Temptations underwent in 1968 when they began their "psychedelic" phase with "Cloud Nine". And much like the Temptations during that time, you hear ALL of the Jacksons' vocals individually on various cuts.

The title song, the electrifying "Get It Together", opens the album and sets the tone for everything you hear throughout. "Don't Say Goodbye Again" and "It's Too Late To Change The Time" are the two ballads on this album, but there is a touch of funk to each of them, so they are not at all out of place. The other songs are all slickly produced R&B dance tracks that were just in time for the blossoming disco movement, and made to make you get up out of your seat! And they do!

Now Motown definitely was accused of recutting the same tunes in their catalog over and over again with different groups to milk it for all its worth, but in this case, it wasn't such a bad idea. The J-5 do four funky, high-octane versions of earlier Motown songs, three from Norman Whitfield/Barrett Strong's psychedelic catalog, the duo responsible for transforming the Temptations: the primal underground club classic "Hum Along and Dance" and "You Need Love Like I Do (Don't You)", the Undisputed Truth's "Mama I Gotta Brand New Thing" and an interesting retake of the Supremes' "Reflections". The massive #1 funk smash from 1974, "Dancing Machine", closes the album out, sparked a whole new dance craze, and put the Jackson 5 back on top where they belonged. If you didn't go off when you saw Michael do the Robot during the song's breakdown, you obviously didn't have a pulse!!!

You also get three bonus tracks from the vaults: "Pride and Joy", a funked up remake of the Marvin Gaye hit, but you hardly recognize it; "Love's Gone Bad", another remake of singer Chris Clark's song from the '60s that sounds like something the Four Tops should have recorded and "Love Is The Thing You Need", from JOYFUL JUKEBOX MUSIC (1976) (the final J-5 album that consisted of tracks that were in the vault and recorded sometime in 1972-73 at Motown but was not promoted).

The two albums that followed GIT (DANCING MACHINE - recycled again for that album - and MOVING VIOLATION) were the group's final offerings for Motown and both of them were heavily dance-oriented and ahead of their time. GIT blazed the trail for everything the Jacksons would do in later years. Pick this CD up and get your dance on! August 21, 2005

A new J5: 4 Stars for GIT, 3 for Skywriter

The SKYWRITER/GET IT TOGETHER combo might as well be two different records by two different bands. SKYWRITER was the last of their bubble-gum kiddie pop, if not softened up a bit with the soft-rock influence of early 70s groups like Bread and The Carpenters. The title track is the only song that sounds somewhat right for its time, with its psychedelic harmonies and intense clavinet a'la Stevie Wonder. "I Can't Quit Your Love" almost fits in this vein, and is perhaps even more soulful and aggressive. The other highlights are the softer ballads and showtunes ("Touch," "Ooh, I'd Love To Be With You," and "Corner of the Sky"). Unfortunately, "Boogie Man" is terrible and almost out of Michael's vocal range at this point; "World of Sunshine" and "Hallelujah Day" seem like post-hippiedom, anti-Vietnam statements that don't sound right from these young'ns, although the songs themselves are decent. They could easily have been recorded by the Fifth Dimension circa 1968.
GET IT TOGETHER, on the other hand, is very surprsing. The first time I heard these songs, I couldn't believe that Motown let the J5 record such long, infectious funk grooves. Sure, some of them sound like Temptation replicas, but some perfectly combine the past J5 with the "new" J5 sound ("Don't Say Goodbye Again," "You Need Love Like I Do," "Mama I Got A Brand New Thing"). Others sound nothing like anything they'd ever done, and succeed marvelously in getting feet moving ("Get It Together," "Dancing Machine"). Despite an awkward cover of "Reflections," this album rocks. The bonus tracks here (and on other recent J5 compilations) show that much of the unreleased material from 1972-73 was much better than what was put on SKYWRITER. That album could have been a much bigger success if they put some of these funkier tracks on it instead of the lightweight fluff. December 18, 2004

Five stars for Get It Together, one for Skywriter

Bubblegum J5 songs were good when they were released, but not 30 years later. Adding that Skywriter was the worst (and luckily last) of J5 albums from that era, it is easy to hate this album right now.

But the following J5 release was a major change in the acoustic side. They started to do funk, and the result was quite good!

It's a pity G.I.T. hasn't been packed together with Moving Violation. May 14, 2004

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