"It's Your Thing" is a funk single by The Isley Brothers. Released in 1969, the anthem was an artistic response to Motown chief Berry Gordy's demanding hold on his artists after the Isleys left the label in late 1968. After scoring one popular hit with the label, with the song "This Old Heart of Mine (Is Weak for You)", the Isleys felt typecast in the role as a second-tier act while well-established Detroit acts like The Temptations, The Miracles, and the Four Tops got more promotion from the label Motown.
The brothers' decision to leave Motown came after a successful British tour, where they had a bigger fan base than in the United States. A re-release of "This Old Heart" had reached number three on the UK Singles Chart. Similar success came with two more singles from their Motown catalog that were hits well after their Motown departure. Berry Gordy allowed the brothers to leave the label, and the Isleys reactivated their own label, T-Neck Records, which they had originally started a few years prior to their Motown signing.
Recorded in two takes and featuring the first appearance of 16-year-old Ernie on bass and Skip Pitts on guitar. The song was released as a single on February 16, 1969, and quickly rose to the top of both the Billboard pop and R&B singles charts, peaking at No. 2 on the former nd marking their first No. 1 hit in the latter. Upon the song's release and ascent to success, Gordy threatened to sue the group for releasing it in an attempt to bring them back to Motown, but he eventually cancelled his threat.
The song has been credited for being one of the first fully-fledged funk songs at the time that such artists as James Brown and Sly and the Family Stone brought their own funk anthems to the scene. Brown used the musical background from the song for the songs "It's My Thing (You Can't Tell Me Who to Sock It to)", an answer song by Marva Whitney, and Brown's own 1974 single, "My Thang". From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_Your_Thing
In this song, Ronald Isley is letting a girl know that she is free to spread her love around, as long as he gets some of it too. “It’s Your Thing” was a popular saying at the time and wonderfully ambiguous, so it could have a sexual connotation or simply be about personal independence.
In an interview on The Isley Brothers: Summer Breeze Greatest Hits Live DVD, Ronald Isley says he wrote this song while dropping his daughter off at school one day. He didn’t want to forget the lyrics so he hummed it in his head and rushed straight to his mother’s house to write it out. He sang it for his eldest brother O'Kelly, who thought it to be a hit, so they set up studio time to record it.
How did Ernie end up playing bass on this song?
Well, I was prepared in my mind to play drums. In rehearsal I had played drums, and then I switched off the drums and played the bass part. When we got to the session I was setting up the drum kit and the bass player came in, and I showed him what I had been playing. And when he started playing, he was more or less playing what he felt, but it wasn’t what I showed him. So just before we started the actual recording, Ronald came over to me and said in my ear, “You’re gonna play bass”, and my heart was immediately thumping. I was scared.They handed me the guy’s bass and put the headphones on me. I heard a voice saying, “Rolling” and counted it off. I held onto the bass for dear life and played it. And it turned out that it worked. Everything about that song, everything about that record worked. Everything. The tempo, the lyrics, the musical track. Ronald sang it on one take, the very first take. Of course, we didn’t know that it was going to be the Frankenstein monster hit 45 for the Isley Brothers’ career.
— Ernie Isley, Noozhawk, 2018
From: https://genius.com/The-isley-brothers-its-your-thing-lyrics
