Sure Hope You Mean It by Raphael Saadiq

Album: The Way I See It (2008)

License This Song

lyrics

Songfacts®:

Saadiq explained on his record label's website that this song showed his deep connection to The Temptations. He explained: "The vocal has a David Ruffin 'feel': I pictured how it was when Eddie Kendricks, Paul Williams and the guys in the Temps were first introduced to the world. I looked at a lot of their album covers so I could immerse myself in the characters. I think of the track as vintage Motown with a Stax guitar line factored in... it's like a melting pot of the two sounds."
Veteran Motown percussionist Jack Ashford played on this track. Saadiq recalled to The Guardian April 24, 2009: "Jack played the bells. He was supposed to play a different line, but he did his own thing, and it was magical. When you've got a veteran in the room, you don't say anything."

Comments

Be the first to comment...

More Songfacts:

Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out The Barrel)Will Glahe

In 1939, a polka craze swept America thanks to "Beer Barrel Polka (Roll Out The Barrel)."

BloodstreamEd Sheeran

Ed Sheeran's "Bloodstream" was written after an experience taking MDMA during a wedding celebration in Ibiza; it's basically about all the feelings that he got from that time.

"Won't Get Fooled Again" by The Who is about a revolution, but it doesn't have a happy ending, since in the end the new regime becomes just like the old one. Pete Townshend thought that whoever was in power was destined to become corrupt.

Good TimesChic

The disco song "Good Tmes" by Chic was a huge influence on early rap, providing the bassline for "Rapper's Delight."

Dancing QueenABBA

ABBA's Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson conceived "Dancing Queen" as a dance song with the working title "Boogaloo," drawing inspiration from the 1974 George McCrae disco hit "Rock Your Baby." Their manager Stig Anderson came up with the title "Dancing Queen."

Uptown FunkMark Ronson

The actress Michelle Pfeiffer gets namechecked in the 2014 megahit "Uptown Funk" ("Michelle Pfeiffer, that white gold"). When it was released, "Riptide" by Vance Joy was on the charts; that song also mentions her ("Closest thing to Michelle Pfeiffer that you've ever seen").