This Song: I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)

The Four Tops

This Song is a monthly feature of So Much Stuff, offering a snippet of association to who and where I was when it was a popular release or otherwise entered my radar.

My years as an art major at a small liberal arts college were the era of Talking Heads’s “Psycho Killer” and Dire Strait’s “Sultans of Swing.” Disco also reigned, but my friends and I held a soft spot for the Motown hits shuffled into the song rotation at Friday night parties. And The Four Tops always always got us out on the floor. 

We never would’ve used a saccharine term of endearment like “sugar pie” or “honey bunch,” and would’ve cringed at, if not been creeped out by, someone addressing us that way. But “I can’t help myself—I love you and nobody else”? Now that was a joyous yet desperate sentiment we could get behind 100 percent.

It’s the pleading vocal of Levi Stubbs—the yearning ache in his voice—that does you in.

---

Bonus Tracks

Look how happy Mark Knopfler is HERE playing Sultans of Swing! And check out THIS CLIP from the film Talking Heads: Chronology. With a quick intro by Seymour Stine of Sire Records, it’s a live version of Psycho Killer, played at CBGB in 1975.

---