The Ardent Tracks of His Years

Smokey Robinson, Singing of Love and Making Hearts Soar For a Half-Century

SANTA MONICA, Calif.

How perfect: Smokey Robinson, forever the romantic, is about to explain his long-standing affinity for amorous expression, and his publicist has decided to dim the lights. Ooo baby baby!

Not that Robinson, America's poet laureate of love, needs help evoking the appropriate mood, even if he's sitting in a sterile record-company conference room. The suave soul man, one of the greatest songwriters in American pop, has been riffing on relationships -- on romantic bliss and conflict and crushing breakups -- for nearly 50 years professionally, mostly for Motown.

"Love never becomes passe," he says in explaining his core competency. "It's an everlasting subject with so many, many facets. Dances come and go; cars, political events and figures all come and go. But love always has significance. Love is forever."

And so, he says: "I basically just write about love. That's my subject."

Robinson wrote his first song 60 years ago, at the age of 6, for a school play about Uncle Remus. Since then, he has written, by his own estimation, "about 4,000 completed" songs. Many more exist in unfinished form.

His first hit, "Shop Around" -- the 1960 Miracles song that simultaneously landed Robinson, his group and his hometown record label on the national cultural map -- was about a mother imploring her son to find just the right wife. Not surprisingly, almost all of the famed entries in his catalogue are centered, one way or another, on matters of the heart -- usually heartbreak: "The Love I Saw in You Was Just a Mirage," "Baby, Baby Don't Cry" and that exquisite lament "Ooo Baby Baby," on which Robinson, singing the aching lead in his high, burning tenor, begs a woman for forgiveness.

Robinson's songs have always tended to be simple yet sophisticated, brimming with passion and sensuous melodies. He's an adroit wordsmith, too, with an understated wit and a terrific sense of rhythm; his juxtapositional couplets are his hallmark.

You treat me badly, I love you madly.

Although she may be cute, she's just a substitute.

You do me wrong now, my love is strong now.

I don't like you, but I love you.