“My Girl” received a Christmastime release in 1964, on December 21st, but didn’t achieve peak success until March of 1965.

Smokey Robinson said about having David Ruffin sing lead for the first time on a Temptations song:

David Ruffin, I knew he was like this sleeping giant in this group, because he had this, it’s sort of a mellow gruff-sounding voice. And all I needed was the right song for his voice and I felt like I would have a smash hit record. So I sat down at the piano to write a song for David Ruffin’s voice. I wanted to make it something that he could belt out, but yet make it melodic and sweet … I always let the Temptations make up their own background vocals, because they were always so great at dong their own background vocals. They could all sing so good. So I was just showing David Ruffin how to sing ‘My Girl’ or the melody and what I thought how he should interpret it, and they would be over standing ont he side of the piano making up the background vocals.