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Why Doesn’t Smokey Robinson Get More Love?
He may not have the pop-culture cachet of Stevie and Aretha, but he’s earned it.
I know what you’re probably thinking: What is he talking about? Smokey Robinson gets plenty of love!
Of course, he does. But for someone with such towering talent and a long list of creative achievements, it’s never felt like enough. Although Smokey was among the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s second induction class (in 1987), The Miracles, the group with which he launched his career, had to wait until 2012. And while his contemporaries Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder have a truckload of Grammys to their names (18 and 22, respectively), Smokey has just five nominations and didn’t win until 1988 (Male R&B Vocal Performance for “Just to See Her”). It remains the only competitive Grammy in his award collection.
When pop pundits start naming the all-time great songwriters of the rock & roll era, how likely are they to name-drop him alongside legendary (and White) pop and rock poets like John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, Jerry Goffin and Carole King, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Bruce Springsteen? Where’s his major-label tribute album?
If any great songwriter, dead or alive, deserves more love, it’s Smokey. If you blinked, you probably missed the fanfare surrounding his 80th birthday last February 19. He didn’t even get his own BET special. Meanwhile, it seems like we’ve been celebrating John Lennon’s 80th, which is on October 9, all year. And get ready for 12 months of tributes to Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Neil Diamond in 2021, as all three hit the octogenarian mark.
Smokey was also given the afterthought treatment last year by the Recording Academy, which underscored its historical under-appreciation at the Grammys. During the 60th anniversary Motown tribute, the man who, alongside Berry Gordy, built one of the most significant labels in the history of…
