“Neither One Of Us (Wants To Be The First To Say Goodbye)” by Gladys Knight & The Pips

Gladys Knight & the Pips said their Motown goodbye with "Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)", a Jim Weatherly song that came out in December 1972 on the company's Soul imprint. It became one of the biggest singles they'd had up to then, and it was the last one they released before walking out the door to Buddah in February 1973, which lends that title an irony nobody needed to underline.

It also named their final Motown album, cut from late 1972 between Hitsville U.S.A. in Detroit and MoWest, the label's Hollywood studio, mostly with producer Joe Porter, who gave the group the freedom to do things their own way. Weatherly wrote the words and the music on his own, and Knight and the Pips make it sound like it was always theirs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.