Motown
Motown is the pop-friendly soul sound of Motown Records, the Detroit label founded by Berry Gordy in 1959.
Motown records pair gospel-style lead vocals and group harmonies with a driving backbeat, tambourine, melodic bass lines, strings and horns, all packed into short, catchy songs. The label's in-house writers and its studio band, the Funk Brothers, gave the 1960s hits a sound that is easy to recognize. It was smoother and more pop-minded than the rawer soul coming from Memphis, which helped it reach both Black and white audiences.
Artists it is known for: The Supremes, The Temptations, Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder.
- Family
- R&B & Soul
- On Spotify
- A current genre
- What it is
- A genre
- From
- Detroit, 1960s
- Also called
- motown sound
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 5%
About 3,800 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have motown among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Motown artists
Marvin Gaye
Stevie Wonder
The Jackson 5
The Jacksons
Al Green
Sam Cooke
Aretha Franklin
The Five Stairsteps
Otis Redding
Bill Withers
The motown artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.