the kind of love that arrives without warning and refuses to be ignored. Marvin Gaye recorded it as an early hit, a song about a woman so persistent in her affection that he finally gives in. The title says it all: he is a stubborn kind of fellow, resistant to love, but she is stubborn too. a battle of wills where both sides win. The arrangement is pure early Motown: handclaps, horns, a rhythm section that drives the song forward with the kind of energy that only young musicians can generate.

That same stubborn love gets a different kind of energy from the Temptations in their 1969 version. Where Marvin's original is an uptempo soul workout, his voice young and eager, the Temptations bring their trademark harmonies and a slicker production. The tempo is slightly slower, the arrangement more polished, the vocals more layered. Where Marvin sounded like a man being won over in real time, the Temptations sound like a group of men reflecting on the experience of being won over, their harmonies suggesting that this is a story they have all lived. The song becomes less about one man's surrender and more about a universal truth: love finds a way around even the most stubborn resistance.