Smokey Robinson “Being With You”
Smokey Robinson was once nothing short of everything. I suspect that many of us have forgotten this undeniable fact. I’m certain, moreover, that there are some who may not even know who Smokey Robinson is or was. He’s eighty now — handsome and bright, if a bit frozen from all of the plastic surgery. Smokey still plays out occasionally and delights Boomers at state fairs, rodeos and the like. The crowds still love to hear him, his singular high tenor just a shadow of its former self. But they really love to see and feel Smokey, his golden eyes, fitted suits and devout romanticism warming them for an evening, just like old times.
It’s been over thirty years since Smokey Robinson was on the charts and almost forty since he was a pop star. But, for nearly twenty years, he was Carol King, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and David Geffen all rolled into one beautiful package. He has written or performed over eighty Billboard Hot 100 singles in his career. Over fifty of them were produced well before he was thirty. If he had only “My Girl,” Tracks of My Tears,” “My Guy,” and “You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me,” and never written another song, he still would have been considered one of the finest songwriters of the 1960s. The Beatles’ covered him. Bob Dylan called him the greatest living American poet. He wrote songs for The Jackson Five, The Temptations, The Commodores, Bobby Darin and The Four Tops, among many others. And he did all of this while also helming many of the affairs of Motown Records during their undisputed peak.
Smokey Robinson’s contributions to popular music are so vast as to make them hard to consider. His appeal, however, is immediate and rather simple. Smokey Robinson was an almost flawlessly smooth, poetic Soul singer with a voice that sounded like a whisper from heaven. He wrote perfectly structured, but deceptively complex, songs about how love and desire feel. He was great and effortless in a way that we rarely see. In his “sport,” he was the equal of Michael Jordan, but MJ looked the opposite of easy. Smokey looked more like young Ken Griffey Jr. -- a beautiful, elite talent, completely unstrained in all aspects of his game.
Of course, it was never that easy. In the early 1970s, Smokey disbanded The Miracles, retired from recording very briefly, and then eventually returned to focus largely on his solo career rather than composing songs for other artists. He was still reliable, releasing eight to ten new songs each year. But his album chart positions regressed and the hits dried up. Soul music had evolved greatly since the early days of Motown. Frankly, the music of Otis Redding, Sly Stone, Al Green and others had a way of making Smokey Robinson’s brand of romanticism sound a bit quaint. The Beatles broke up and, gradually, 70s Pop music eschewed its fascination with groups and performers in favor of artists and singer-songwriters. Flailing in his own very charming way, Smokey suffered briefly from writer’s block and turned more of his attention to the business of Motown Records. Still relatively young and entirely able, he stood outside of the charts and of fashion for the very first time.
In the later 1970s, an older, more plaid, stoned and depressed America found its way back to Smokey Robinson. In 1979 he scored his first top five hit in a decade, with “Cruisin.” Aside from the wider collar and just the slightest of lines around his eyes, this forty year old version of Smokey was every bit as tender as the first generation product. If anything, he seemed smoother, wiser and more comfortable. Smokey hadn’t changed. Everyone else had. And, in 1979, America had few comforts greater than Smokey Robinson.
The next couple of years proved to be active and successful ones for Smokey, whose youthful perfection had transitioned into a genteel agelessness. On the heels of “Cruisin” and the critically admired, “Warm Thoughts,” he returned in 1981 with “Being With You,” an album that smelled like cool aftershave and felt like a warm blanket. On the album’s cover, tucked in a striped, v-neck sweater and a couple of gold chains, smiles Smokey Robinson. His hair has grown out to a casual, “I know I look good length.” His mustache is unconcerned with his lips. His eyes are the kindest shade of gold. He looks to be the absolute peak of prime.
The title track from “Being With You” was a bonafide smash hit. Although it had yet to be formally named as such, “Adult Contemporary” was beginning to compete with Crossover Country and New Wave for Pop radio airplay. And “Being With You” is among the greatest Adult Contemporary singles ever made. Patient and oozing a very grown up sensuality, the song is built around a dreamy chorus that sits on top of the main verses only to then shift into a different, more yearning register in the alternating verses. It’s a sneaky trick of melody made possible by the singer’s rapturous vocals that are somehow both a falsetto and a whisper. The song makes you feel like you are on a timeless, once in a lifetime date with Smokey Robinson and that he is singing directly to you. It was 1981, so there are two places where a saxophone appears unnecessarily. But, otherwise, “Being With You” is flawless.
Of the eight songs on the album, Smokey wrote half of them, including the titular single. He also wrote the spiritual sister to that song, "If You Wanna Make Love (Come 'Round Here)." Whereas the first song was about being together, the latter is about really being together — all night long. Sounding positively undeniable, in spite of the early 80s musical decor, the singer suggests “this may take me all night long.” I’m unsure whether “this” is the courtship, the date or the sex, but I don’t think many were asking for clarification in 1981. Slower and less punchy than his 60s hits, “If You Wanna Make Love” is a pretty good song delivered by an elite singer and songwriter. Caught up in the moment of the first single, though, it is hard to be objective.
Most, but not all, of the songs are well built and tailored for the singer’s voice and breezy, romantic confidence. There are touches of nostalgia in the backing vocals, but, otherwise, everything has been updated tastefully for the new decade. This being said, the title track is the only masterpiece here and some of the others, while “well built,” are missteps. Smokey himself is not immune to failure. On “Food For Thought,” Smokey tries his hand at Reggae -- Jamaican accent and all -- and delivers a song and vocal almost up to the task. The effort, especially for a first timer in the genre, is impressive. But the song’s lyric, which, over the steel drum, shames Big Tobacco (bravo), Big Industry (sure), philandering men (um, kind of hypocritical, but, yes, of course) and women who pay too much attention to their children and not enough to their husbands (wait, what?), is preachy and disingenuous. Smokey assures us that he’s not telling us what to do but just offering “food for thought.” He’s such a competent songwriter and his voice is so endearing that his words here almost go un-noted. At twenty, the song might have passed for naivety or bravado. At forty one, they read as a gaffe born from hubris.
Much of “Being With You,” skates around lite Soul, with glimmers of Disco and Funk. Tonally it evokes a warm flicker of romance painted on top of a wistful sadness that defined so much of 1970s. If Karen Carpenter wrote songs for Earth, Wind and Fire or The Chi Lites, they might resemble about half of this album. What elevated “Being With You” slightly, aside from the single, was less the material and more the voice. On “You Are Forever,” Smokey slows everything down and stretches out syllables with his falsetto to ensure that not an ounce of sentiment is left in the song. A relatively simple melody, supported with spare electric guitar strums and electric piano touches, the singer makes several breathtaking vocal turns and then lets his voice carry the refrain home for the last minute. It’s a decent song. But every bit of the performance that is great resides in Smokey’s voice.
The album closer, “I Hear The Children Singing” is a big crooner that lacks the vocal or musical counterpoint required by a song of its scale. It wants to have a massive chorus but there’s no hook. It tries to get by on the singer and the sentiment. But, for the only time on “Being With You,” Smokey is truly not enough. The song is mired in a cloying romanticism that sounds of a sort of arrested development one might expect from Michael Jackson. In an unfortunate and unsettling coda to the otherwise sweet and short date with Smokey, he sings:
Why did we grow up
What were we thinking of
Why didn't we stay young
And so in love
I hear the children singing
But I hear a tiny voice cry
Why can't I find love
Like we knew
When we were young at play
Will I ever hear the music
Will my sadness stay
I'm only a child
A tiny voice cries
“Being With You” welcomes us with the cover image of a handsome, golden-eyed singer and the call of his golden tenor on a song that would define his second half as an artist. Upon release of the album, Smokey Robinson was fully back on top. He was completely prime, in a way that only comes with new middle age. By its very definition, though, that prime moment was fleeting. You can almost hear the seasons turn as “Being With You” goes on. What worked for him before doesn’t work as well the next time. His charisma begins to sound unnerving; his confidence like hubris. Somewhere in the middle of the album, Smokey turns past prime.
“Being With You,” the single, would mark the last time Smokey Robinson would crack the top forty of the Billboard Hot 100. In 1984, after twenty five years of marriage to former Miracle, Claudette Rogers (Robinson), Smokey admitted to decades of infidelity and to the paternity of a newborn son with another woman. Needless to say, his marriage ended the following year. Around the same time, his casual relationship with cocaine turned into a full blown crack addiction that would last several years and nearly kill him. Gracefully, he would get healthy and return to music. But, from the moment his last major hit ends, four minutes and six seconds after we first took in his perfect smile, he would never be prime again. Obviously, all artists are different. As are their primes. What was sweet the day before is suddenly cloying and inedible. Smokey was, briefly, in 1981, that perfect mango.