She’s not only the voice of some of the greatest songs in pop history – Baby Love, Where Did Our Love Go, Stop! In The Name Of Love, Ain’t No Mountain High Enough – but in the mid-Sixties it was The Supremes, more than anyone, who brought black music into the living rooms of pop fans around the world.

 

This heartbreaking ballad was her first solo UK No.1 and my favourite. Her voice is aching, vulnerable and almost childlike, yet also resilient and defiant. The melodies are beautiful. And it packs a powerful emotional punch.

 

The spoken word section is enough to bring a grown man to tears. “No other song makes me cry,” says a comment beneath this clip. “I don’t know what it is about this song but it just stirs up so many emotions. It’s as if I’m an abandoned child waiting to be rescued.” That’s it exactly.

 

I did once encounter Ross in the 1990s. She had a cloud of strangely immovable purple “hair” and the most regal air of anyone I had ever met (apart from the actual Queen): as a team of fawning minders manoeuvred her from car to pavement, she seemed to glide without her feet touching the ground, her features set into a carefully constructed photogenic pose, with a faraway look in her eyes.

 

I do remember someone broke the PR’s strict instructions and called out “Diana!” to her. Her brow momentarily clouded, before she swept off in high dudgeon, ensuring that no one would again make the mistake of addressing her as anything but “Miss Ross.”

 

I’m Still Waiting and Ross’s previous UK hit Remember Me are both on the second album I ever bought – Motown Chartbusters Vol.6. I may have been attracted by Roger Dean’s ‘fly’ LP cover as much as the music. Although best known for his fantastical sleeves for Yes, he also designed the logo of Fly Records, home to T. Rex, and I suspect that may have been what drew me to it.