Musical Memoirs

DIANA ROSS: "Musical Memoirs"(EMI)

EVERYBODY knows that these days Diana Ross demands that she be addressed as "Miss Ross". She also has been known to tongue-lash photographers who dare to suggest that she should position herself a certain way, for publicity shots, saying "Hey, don't direct me, just take the picture".

This kind of conceit, or insecurity is, of course, her own concern and Lord knows the music business is filled with people who present a sweet image to their public and are bitter, mean-spirited souls in their private lives. The only point at which such characteristics may have undermined Ms Ross's music over the years is when it came to projecting humility, or heartbreak, in her songs.

But then the 16-year-old Diana Ross's "romantic attachment" to the 31-year-old Berry Gordy Jnr. hardly left her in a position of vulnerability at Tamla Motown. From the outset, if anything, it placed her - and to a much lesser extent, Florence Ballard and Mar Wilson - in a position so powerful that the label's greatest songwriters, musicians, producers, designers, PR people et al were effectively at her beck and call.

And so the first CD of this four CD retrospective undoubtedly captures The Supremes and Motown at their peak: from the self-consciously sexy sighs of 'Baby Love' through the assertive 'You Keep Me Hanging On' to the social commentary of 'Love Child' and 'Reflections', complete with their quasi-psychedelic soundscapes. Indeed, 'Love Child' remains one of the great pop/rock cries from the ghettos of black America and, here, Ross's sense of defiance and determined self-preservation is perfectly matched by a lyric that spits in the eye of all those who would look down on children who were born "illegitimate".

Sadly missing are many of the tracks from Diana Ross's first, and best, solo album, though 'Reach Out And Touch' and 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' are included. However, Seventies hits such as 'Remember Me', 'I'm Still Waiting' and 'The Theme from Mahogany (Do You Know Where You're Going To?)' more than compensate.

As with too many of these "juice-the-market-coming-up-to-Christmas" or "cash-in-on-a-rapidly-fading-career" CD sets, the last two CDs are stacked mostly with fillers from recent albums that didn't sell so well, made bearable only by the inclusion of hits like 'Muscles' and 'Chain Reaction'. The latter probably best sums up Ross in the 1990s: a woman plundering her own past in an attempt to remain relevant in a recording industry which has long since replaced her with the likes of Whitney Houston.

And the inevitable, post-orgasm-pose on the cover of the CD set seems hardly necessary for one of the most identifiable black female voices of our time - though, it does, I guess, seem quite fitting that the picture strongly suggests auto-eroticism.

• Joe Jackson