Live Wire (song)

Infobox Single
Name = Live Wire
Artist = Martha and the Vandellas
from Album = Greatest Hits
B-side = Old Love (Let's Try It Again)
Released = 1964
Format = vinyl record (7" 45 RPM)
Recorded = Hitsville USA (Studio A); 1963
Genre = Soul/pop
Length = 2:35
Label = Gordy
Writer = Lamont Dozier
Brian Holland
Edward Holland, Jr.
Producer = Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier
Chart position = *#42 US Pop Songs
Last single = "Quicksand(1963)
This single = Live Wire
(1964)
Next single = In My Lonely Room"
(1964)

"Live Wire" is a 1964 dance single released by Motown girl group Martha and the Vandellas. The song was produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland under the same gospel-pop confection of their earlier hit singles "(Love is Like a) Heat Wave" and "Quicksand". The song explained why the narrator can't come up with words to tell her lover that she was through with him because when she looks at him, she feels that he is "like a bolt of lightning" and that he's a "live wire". Though the song failed to hit the Top 40 of the pop charts (peaking at #42), it's still one of the group's most popular early singles to this day. The song reached #11 on Cashbox's R&B singles chart in which during this time the Billboard R&B chart had been suspended and would be until January of 1965.

Credits

*Lead vocals by Martha Reeves
*Background vocals by Rosalind Ashford and Betty Kelley
*Produced by Brian Holland and Lamont Dozier
*Written by Brian Holland, Lamont Dozier and Edward Holland, Jr.
*Instrumentation by The Funk Brothers