100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #42 Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – The Tracks of My Tears

Released: 1965

It’s a feature of twenty first century life which to be fair many of us love, that ability to isolate ourselves and choose with whom we share our lives with. But whilst musicians now can make records where the various parts are assembled by people on different continents who never meet, maybe they lack a certain quality, that spark people working in the same room can have.

Smokey Robinson – Smoke to his inner circle – grew up with the public, forming The Miracles with Bobby Ropers, Ronnie White, Pete Moore and Claudette Ropers at the age of 12. They sung on street corners at first, hung out with Aretha Franklin and got their break not when they failed their first audition but when the listening Berry Gordy asked them over to talk about songs. And so began a hugely fruitful partnership.

The dynasty they eventually built was nowhere near fully formed by the time he took a riff Marvin Gaye had come up with and transformed it into a ballad with a benign, almost uncertain opening, before the harmonies began to swing and just in time we got to that showstopping chorus. It was a song about loneliness despite being in a crowd, an idea which in the none-for-all twenties, now seems as antiquated as feeling someone’s arm on your shoulder.