999,975: The Jackson 5 — The Love You Save

Continuing in the proud tradition of Motown artists who order people to stop, this Jackson 5 1970 hit warns Michael Jackson's schoolyard sweetheart not to cross him (and/or apparently Jermaine), lest she spend the rest of her days all alone in the danger zone. It's hard to decide what's weirder: that Michael and Jermaine are trying to convince the unnamed girl not to cheat because she'll be labled "a flirt", or that 12-year-old Michael claims to sing from the perspective of the girl's grown husband—a husband whose wife's dalliances include kissing under an apple tree with one guy, having her figurative "chimes" rung by another, and holding hands with a third.

Whatever! The Jackson 5 were never about showing off the lyric-writing chops of The Corporation. They were about showing off the preternatural pipes of young Michael and the game, if inferior, talents of his bros. This song's got all that in spades, and from the "bum-bum"s aping the bass line to the "do-da-do-do-da" backing vocals bouncing along with the guitars and percussion to the part where they make an acrostic of the word "stop" during the bridge ("O is for oh, no!"), it's not hard to imagine that there was a long stretch when these guys were only singing on number one hit records. You have never heard four dudes more happy that their ecstatic little brother's wife was cheating on him with four other dudes. That was the point.

The Love You Save - The Jackso...