Teena Marie – Lovergirl

The Woman Who Sued Motown, Changed Music Law, Then Hit The Top Five

By October 1984, Teena Marie had already survived more than most artists twice her age. Her debut album had been released without her photo on the cover — Motown didn’t want to confuse buyers about whether she was Black. Now, three years after suing the label and winning, she walked into Lion Share Recording Studios in Los Angeles as a free woman, signed to Epic Records, and recorded “Lovergirl” — entirely by herself. Writer, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. Every note controlled. It peaked at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 in March 1985 and spent 23 weeks on the chart.

The chart journey was slow but inevitable. After performing “Lovergirl” on American Bandstand on December 8, 1984, the single entered the Hot 100 the very next day at number 79. It then spent fifteen weeks climbing — week by week, market by market — until it lodged itself in the top five. The Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance followed, losing only to Aretha Franklin’s “Freeway of Love.” Losing to Aretha Franklin is barely losing at all.

The backstory behind “Lovergirl” is inseparable from the legal battle that made it possible. In 1982, Teena Marie had sued Motown for nonpayment of royalties and refusal to release her new material — a contract she had signed as a minor without legal counsel. She won. The lawsuit directly resulted in the Brockert Initiative, a piece of legislation named after her real name, Mary Christine Brockert, that made it illegal for a record label to hold an artist under contract while refusing to release their work. Luther Vandross and the Mary Jane Girls were among those who benefited from it. “It wasn’t something I set out to do,” she said. “I just wanted to get away from Motown and have a good life.”

The sound of “Lovergirl” reflected that hard-won freedom completely. Recorded at Lion Share and mixed by Bobby Brooks with mastering by Bernie Grundman, it arrived sharp and funky — rubbery bass, snapping snares, shimmering keys — built in the Minneapolis mould but rawer and more urgent than anything coming out of that scene. Teena played many of the instruments herself, crediting her old mentor Rick James with teaching her the skills to do it. James had spotted her at Motown years earlier, shelved a project he was meant to produce for Diana Ross, and built Teena Marie’s entire musical identity instead.

Starchild, released in 1984 on Epic Records, was her sixth studio album and her commercial breakthrough at pop level. It also launched “Out on a Limb” as a follow-up R&B single. But “Lovergirl” was the moment that finally matched her long-established credibility in Black music with the mainstream recognition she’d been denied. Motown had quietly released her first album without her image. Epic put her face everywhere.

The song’s reach has been long and varied. Prince performed an interpolation of it live at The Forum in Inglewood in 2011. It appeared in the 2002 Jennifer Lopez film Maid in Manhattan, introducing it to a generation too young for 1984. In 2023, Teena Marie won a posthumous Grammy — for Best R&B Song, co-writing Beyoncé’s “Cuff It” — a final recognition that felt long overdue and perfectly timed.

She died on December 26, 2010, aged 54. “I’m a black artist with white skin,” she once told Time magazine. “At the end of the day, you have to sing what’s in your own soul.” “Lovergirl” is exactly that — a record made entirely on her own terms, by an artist who had literally changed the law to earn the right to make it.