"Love Machine" is a 1976 number-one single recorded by Motown group The Miracles, taken from their album City of Angels. This single was one of two Billboard Hot 100 Top 40 hits recorded by The Miracles with Billy Griffin as lead vocalist; the other is 1973's "Do It Baby". Griffin had replaced Miracles founder Smokey Robinson as lead singer in 1972. The song features a growling vocal by Miracle Bobby Rogers.
Engineered and mixed by Kevin Beamish, "Love Machine" was produced by Freddie Perren, a former member of The Corporation brain trust in charge of the early Jackson 5 hits. It was written by Billy Griffin and his Miracles group-mate Pete Moore, with whom he wrote the rest of the City of Angels tracks as well. The song's lyrics, delivered over a disco beat, compare a lover to an electronic device such as a computer or a robot. The seven-minute song was split into two parts for its release as a single, with "Part 1" receiving most notoriety.
"Love Machine" was a multi-million selling Platinum single, and a number-one smash hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, and, with 4.5 million copies sold, was the best-selling single of The Miracles' career. The single went to #5 on the Hot Soul Singles chart, and went to #20 on Record World's National Disco file Top 20 chart. It was also a Top 10 hit in England, peaking at number three on the UK Singles Chart.
By 1979, the song saw its first cover version, performed by Thelma Houston. Houston's version became a popular song with club DJs at the time in the United States, although it did not chart. In Asia, and especially in Japan, "Love Machine" became Houston's most successful single, topping the Japanese charts. The success prompted her album Ride to the Rainbow to be reissued as Love Machine for the Japanese release.
Wham! performed a cover version of "Love Machine" on their 1983 album, Fantastic.
The first 30-seconds of the song was featured in a couple of Denny's restaurant television commercials in the 80's, depicting a mother hen and her chicks dancing to this tune for their Grand Slam Breakfasts.
Also heard in the 1995 Disney film Heavyweights and the 1997 crime film Donnie Brasco, also it was featured in the 2002 film The New Guy.
"Love Machine," to which Griffin and co-writer Miracle Pete Moore were smart enough to retain publishing rights,through their own publishing company, Grimora Music, is the most-used song in Motown history and has generated more than $15 million in revenues.
Famous quotes containing the words love, machine and/or miracles:
“Love is at the root of all healthy discipline. The desire to be loved is a powerful motivation for children to behave in ways that give their parents pleasure rather than displeasure. it may even be our own long-ago fear of losing our parents’ love that now sometimes makes us uneasy about setting and maintaining limits. We’re afraid we’ll lose the love of our children when we don’t let them have their way.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“But it is found that the machine unmans the user. What he gains in making cloth, he loses in general power. There should be a temperance in making cloth, as well as in eating.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The miracles of the church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)