“You Make Me Feel Brand New” by The Stylistics

The Stylistics put out Thom Bell and Linda Creed's "You Make Me Feel Brand New" as a single in 1974, a Philadelphia soul ballad built on two voices: co-founder Airrion Love's baritone opens it, and lead singer Russell Thompkins Jr. answers in falsetto, the pair trading off from there. A longer, five-minute take had already turned up a year earlier on the album Rockin' Roll Baby.

Bell later told Record Collector that he'd scolded Creed for breaking one of their songwriting rules by slipping religion into the lyric, then felt terrible when she said she'd written the song about him, so the line stayed. The single climbed to No. 2 on the Hot 100 for two weeks, kept off the top by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods' "Billy Don't Be a Hero", and reached No. 5 on the R&B chart.

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