Human Nature have been doing their Motown thing for so long it’s easy to forget they used to be a boy band. But all that is coming to an end with the release of their final Motown experience, Get Ready.
After pumping out a few of these soulful nostalgia trips, there was always the risk the third album would become stale. To prevent this, The Nature headed to Detroit and enlisted the help of some of Motown’s finest artists: Mary Wilson of The Supremes, Martha Reeves, The Temptations, and Smokey Robinson.
The result is an album that’s full of energy and loads of fun. You might think that by the third album, Human Nature would have already covered all the good tracks. The wonderful thing about Motown music is that no matter how many albums come before it, there are still great songs to record. “The Way You Do The Things You Do,” “Tears of a Clown,” “It’s The Same Old Song,” and the title track “Get Ready” all benefit from the Human Nature treatment. I could have done without the inclusion of a Motown-style “Jingle Bells,” but that’s what I get for buying the album around Christmas time.
There’s nothing earth-shattering or revolutionary about this recording. If you didn’t like the first couple of Motown albums, this one probably won’t rev you either. But there’s a reason why Human Nature have sold millions of Motown records around this country. Quite simply, these lads have four of the finest voices in Australia. And when you get them singing some of the greatest songs ever written, the result is always going to be sublime.
Image sources: Human Nature website and jeaneeem @ Wikimedia Commons