#92: BOYZ II MEN
"End Of The Road"
from the album Boomerang: Original Soundtrack Album
Released: June 1992
Although it was very far from being the last hit on the Motown label,
“End Of The Road” was maybe the last recognisable “Motown hit” that most
people would remember without looking the rest up, and listening to its
full-length 5.48 version, and having grown up with Motown in my bones,
it is difficult not to become emotional at the spectre of a long and
crucial chapter in music being brought to a close. Everyone involved in
its making, from writers/producers L.A. Reid and Babyface onwards, must
have known the record’s real significance, since stylistically it
reaches far, far back, towards the fifties street corner symphonies
which gave Motown its original life. This may have been recognised by
the record’s American buyers, who made it the most commercially
successful of all Motown singles and kept it at number one for a then
record thirteen weeks. Here in Britain, although the song only stayed
on top for three weeks, it had climbed the chart slowly and patiently
for over two months – a real slow burner – before peaking, just as in
the old days.
The four members of Boyz II Men take turns to voice the one soul, the soul who knows that he can’t really stop his girl from leaving, but is not confident that he will survive her departure. Their voices cluster and dovetail together just as the teenage Temptations (when they still called themselves the Primes) would have done back in Detroit, but the pain steadily escalates. At first they try to laugh her words off – there is a somewhat forced giggle after the line “Girl, I know you really love me,” and the following lines of “You just don’t realise you’ve never been there before/It’s only your first time” suggest that he may give her the benefit of the doubt (“Maybe I’ll forgive you” – is this “Band Of Gold” narrated from the other perspective?). But then there’s the untrammelled agony of the screaming “Pain in my head/Oh, I’d rather be dead!”
And finally, the crucial break in the song’s smooth 6/8 journey, as the bass narrator – taking the tradition even further back, to the Mills Brothers and Inkspots – voices (possibly to himself) his true feelings: “When you just hurt me and just ran out with that other fella…baby – I knew about it…I just didn’t care…You just don’t understand how much I love you, do you?” he asks in rhetorical pity. As the song swells up towards its final climax behind him, his hurt becomes more palpable – “Yes baby, my heart is lonely…My heart HURTS, baby…Yes, I feel pain TOO!…Baby PLEASE…”
So the soul knows her untruth, yet the soul clings because it doesn’t know how not to; because “End Of The Road” stands as a metaphor for the imminent passing of Motown, and the extreme reluctance not to let go of those memories, that sometimes utterable magic…”Although we’ve come to the end of the road/Still I can’t let go/It’s unnatural!/You belong to me…I belong to you!” The music finally fades to leave the voices on their own, clapping their hands to the slow rhythm, back to doo-wop, back to reminding us all how it started; they wave their farewells, the book is closed…but for those of us who lived through even half of Motown as it happened, that book will always remain open.
The four members of Boyz II Men take turns to voice the one soul, the soul who knows that he can’t really stop his girl from leaving, but is not confident that he will survive her departure. Their voices cluster and dovetail together just as the teenage Temptations (when they still called themselves the Primes) would have done back in Detroit, but the pain steadily escalates. At first they try to laugh her words off – there is a somewhat forced giggle after the line “Girl, I know you really love me,” and the following lines of “You just don’t realise you’ve never been there before/It’s only your first time” suggest that he may give her the benefit of the doubt (“Maybe I’ll forgive you” – is this “Band Of Gold” narrated from the other perspective?). But then there’s the untrammelled agony of the screaming “Pain in my head/Oh, I’d rather be dead!”
And finally, the crucial break in the song’s smooth 6/8 journey, as the bass narrator – taking the tradition even further back, to the Mills Brothers and Inkspots – voices (possibly to himself) his true feelings: “When you just hurt me and just ran out with that other fella…baby – I knew about it…I just didn’t care…You just don’t understand how much I love you, do you?” he asks in rhetorical pity. As the song swells up towards its final climax behind him, his hurt becomes more palpable – “Yes baby, my heart is lonely…My heart HURTS, baby…Yes, I feel pain TOO!…Baby PLEASE…”
So the soul knows her untruth, yet the soul clings because it doesn’t know how not to; because “End Of The Road” stands as a metaphor for the imminent passing of Motown, and the extreme reluctance not to let go of those memories, that sometimes utterable magic…”Although we’ve come to the end of the road/Still I can’t let go/It’s unnatural!/You belong to me…I belong to you!” The music finally fades to leave the voices on their own, clapping their hands to the slow rhythm, back to doo-wop, back to reminding us all how it started; they wave their farewells, the book is closed…but for those of us who lived through even half of Motown as it happened, that book will always remain open.
THEY.
CAN'T.
LOSE.
THEIR.
SELVES.
AGAIN.
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