Shake It Off

Jr. Walker & The All Stars

Shake And Fingerpop1965

Where Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" borrowed the command to shake from pop instinct, Jr. Walker & The All Stars had already made it a full-body workout back in 1965. "Shake And Fingerpop" landed as a follow-up to "Shotgun" on the *Shotgun* album that same year, with Junior Walker — born Autry DeWalt Mixon Jr. — anchoring the track on saxophone in a style rooted in jump blues players like Louis Jordan and Illinois Jacquet. The group had been discovered by Harvey Fuqua in 1961 and landed on Motown's Soul imprint, where they became one of the label's signature acts. That raw, horn-driven energy connects directly forward to David Ruffin's smoother, more polished soul, showing how Motown could hold both sounds under one roof.

David Ruffin

Put A Little Love In Your Heart1969

This track lands right between Jr. Walker's raw, floor-shaking funk and the polished pop sound the Commodores would perfect by 1976 — and it shows Motown actively smoothing that transition. David Ruffin had just been fired from the Temptations in 1968, the year before this recording, after leading the group on classics like "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg." Rather than chase that harder-edged Temptations sound, producer Henry Cosby pushed him toward something warmer and more radio-friendly, covering a song originally written by Jackie DeShannon. It's a deliberate repositioning — Ruffin's unmistakable rasp wrapped around pop structure instead of psychedelic soul. The move points directly toward the smoother Motown-adjacent sound that groups like the Commodores would own in the mid-seventies.

Commodores

High On Sunshine1976

Sitting between David Ruffin's smooth Motown soul and the polished synth-pop that Tears For Fears would bring a decade later, "High On Sunshine" shows exactly how Motown's house sound evolved into something brighter and more radio-ready. Written by Lionel Richie and Thomas McClary, it captures the Commodores in their mid-70s stride — the same band that had signed with Motown back in November 1972 after meeting as freshmen at Tuskegee Institute in 1968. The track lives in the space between the group's harder funk workouts like "Brick House" and the silky ballads that would define their peak years. It later surfaced on the 1990 US compilation *Hot on the Tracks*, proof that this sunnier side of their catalog kept finding new listeners long after its original release.

Marvin Gaye

God Is Love1979

Coming after The Meters' funk-rooted catalog, "God Is Love" shows how Motown's spiritual side ran just as deep as its groove. The song originally appeared as the B-side to the "What's Going On" single in a slower, string-heavy arrangement — the album version Gaye ultimately kept is brighter and faster, a deliberate choice that changes its whole emotional weight. Gaye co-wrote the track with Anna Gordy Gaye, Elgie Stover, and James Nyx, drawing the title directly from 1 John 4 as a nod to his religious upbringing and a dedication to his father. Legendary Motown bassist James Jamerson anchors the track, with David Van dePitte handling arrangements across sessions at Hitsville U.S.A. in Detroit and The Sound Factory in West Hollywood — the same multi-city setup that shaped the entire *What's Going On* album.

Tears For Fears

Everybody Wants To Rule The World1985

The groove DNA from Commodores' mid-70s funk runs thin by the time Tears for Fears arrive, but the hunger for a big, irresistible pop hook absolutely does not. Formed in Bath in 1981, Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal built this song around layered keyboards from Ian Stanley and crisp programming from producer Chris Hughes — a sound that pushed synth-pop toward something warmer and more radio-ready than its colder early-80s roots. That shift mattered. Where earlier synth acts kept listeners at arm's length, this track's open guitar work from Neil Taylor gave it a brightness that cleared the path for the Pet Shop Boys to arrive two years later with a harder, more dramatic synth edge on "It's a Sin." Same technology, different emotional temperature — and that contrast is exactly what makes this branch of the lineage worth tracing.

Pet Shop Boys

It's a Sin1987

Where Tears For Fears leaned into guitar-driven arena pop, Pet Shop Boys stripped the sound back to pure synthesizer architecture. "It's a Sin" hit number one in the UK in 1987, built entirely around Chris Lowe's E-mu Emulator II and Fairlight CMI — no live drums, no rock pretense, just cold, dramatic electronics under Neil Tennant's deadpan confession. The track's video, directed by filmmaker Derek Jarman, gave it a visual weight that separated it from lighter synth-pop contemporaries. That emotional seriousness carried directly into New Order's "True Faith," released the same year, which pushed the same electronic palette toward something equally cinematic. Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe had met in a Chelsea electronics shop back in August 1981 — fitting that the machines they bonded over would eventually make them the most successful duo in UK chart history.

New Order

True Faith1987

Picking up where the Pet Shop Boys left synth-pop in 1987 — all grand drama and studio polish — New Order answered with something colder and more machine-driven. "True Faith" was co-produced by Stephen Hague and marked a slicker commercial turn for the Salford band that had spent the early decade fusing New Wave guitar with club electronics. The group had already proved the formula could sell: their 1983 single "Blue Monday" became the best-selling 12-inch single of all time. Here, Bernard Sumner's detached vocals ride a rhythm that feels genuinely designed for the dance floor rather than the rock stage. That tension — electronic pulse underneath human unease — planted seeds that New Orleans brass outfit Rebirth Brass Band would water from a completely different direction just two years later.

Rebirth Brass Band

Feel Like Funkin' It Up1989

Where New Order's synth-driven "True Faith" left off in 1987, Rebirth Brass Band pulled the funk back into the streets — literally. Founded in 1983 by Phillip "Tuba Phil" Frazier, his brother Keith, and classmates from Joseph S. Clark Senior High School in New Orleans' Tremé neighborhood, Rebirth built their sound on the same rhythmic muscle that would later fuel The Meters' 1995 comeback energy. "Feel Like Funkin' It Up" captures the band at their most raw, with Keith Frazier's bass drum and Kerry Hunter's snare locking in around Philip Frazier's sousaphone — a wall of groove you feel before you understand it. The track's ISRC dates its recording to 1989, years before it reached wider ears on the 2004 Rhino compilation *Doctors, Professors, Kings & Queens*. Tremé didn't wait for permission.

The Meters

Here Comes The Meter Man1995

Where Rebirth Brass Band carried New Orleans funk into the streets, The Meters had already laid the foundation in the studio. Recorded for Josie Records and first released on their 1969 debut album, "Here Comes the Meter Man" is a locked-groove instrumental built by four players — Art Neville, Leo Nocentelli, George Porter Jr., and Zigaboo Modeliste — who worked as the house band for producer Allen Toussaint at Sansu Enterprises. That same year, "Cissy Strut" hit the R&B Top Ten, proving this spare, percussive approach could move crowds without a single horn. The Meters defined what bayou funk actually sounds like at its source, and their sound fed directly into the hip-hop and funk that followed through the 1980s and 1990s — setting the stage for Marvin Gaye's more gospel-soaked explorations ahead.

★ Taylor Swift

Shake It Off2014

Our starting point is a 2014 pop monster — the lead single from Taylor Swift's *1989*, the album that officially cut her ties to Nashville. Produced by Max Martin and Shellback in Stockholm, "Shake It Off" leans on a punchy horn section (Jonas Thander on sax, Jonas Lindeborg on trumpet, Magnus Wiklund on trombone) and a stomping handclap groove that owes a lot more to vintage soul revues than to country radio. That horn-and-handclap DNA is exactly what links it backward to Jr. Walker & The All Stars' "Shake And Fingerpop" from 1965. Swift's hook — the chant of "shake it off" over a brass stab — is doing the same job Walker's saxophone did fifty years earlier on the Motown circuit: telling you to move, then daring you not to. The lineage runs through that command.