Berry Gordy met Smokey Robinson in 1957, who was singing in a doo-wop group called the Matadors. Though Robinson was only seventeen, the meeting would eventually break racial barriers and forever change pop music.
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The Matadors—renamed the Miracles—recorded “Shop Around,” written by Gordy and Robinson. They were one of Gordy’s first signings to his new label, (Motown subsidiary) Tamla Records. “Shop Around” became the label’s first million-selling hit, and Robinson became one of Motown’s most important songwriters and, ultimately, the label’s vice president.
The Miracles also wrote songs for Motown’s other artists, including The Temptations, Mary Wells, and Marvin Gaye. After several successful hits, Robinson wanted to leave the stage and focus on his family with his wife and fellow Miracle, Claudette Robinson. His plans changed when the Miracles’ song “Baby, Baby Don’t Cry” reached the Billboard Top 10. Then Motown re-released “The Tears of a Clown” as a single in 1970, and the Miracles were in demand. Robinson remained with the group until 1972.
[Smokey Robinson 2024 Concert Dates: Get Tickets Here]
“The Tears of a Clown” took an unlikely path to become a defining song for the vocal group. And it wasn’t even Berry Gordy who considered releasing it as a single. Someone living half the world away from Detroit chose the song in a last-ditch effort to build an audience for the group overseas.
I Am Not Pagliaccio!
Robinson borrowed the narrative from the Italian opera Pagliacci, a story about an acting troupe led by a jealous man, Canio, who murders his actress wife, Nedda, and her lover. Canio plays a clown or pagliaccio and must make the audience laugh, though he’s in despair behind the makeup from his wife’s betrayal.
Now if there’s a smile on my face
It’s only there trying to fool the public
But when it comes down to fooling you
Now, honey, that’s quite a different subject
The comedy’s events mirror the actors’ lives, and Canio says his face isn’t pale from makeup but shame. The shame brought on him by his wife and her lover. Canio’s wife pleads with him to remember the audience and remain in character, but instead, he murders her on stage. Nedda’s lover rushes the stage, and Canio kills him, too. The wall between the play and real-life falls with the famous final line: The comedy is finished!
Just like Pagliacci did
I try to keep my surface hid
Smiling in the public eye
But in my lonely room, I cry
The tears of a clown
When there’s no one around
Robinson’s character smiles publicly, hiding pain and loss because the woman he loves has left him. The song unmasks the ridiculous charade, just as in the opera when the audience discovers, with horror, that the events unfolding on stage are real.
Circus Music
Stevie Wonder wrote the music to “The Tears of a Clown” with his producer, Hank Crosby, and they gave the instrumental to Robinson to write lyrics to. Robinson thought the music sounded like a circus, and thus wrote the words based on a clown. Pagliacci was the perfect antagonist for the song; Robinson called him “The clown who cries.” The clown paints a smile on his face, then cries when he’s alone in his dressing room.
[RELATED: 7 Songs You Didn’t Know Stevie Wonder Wrote for Other Artists]
The metaphor is timeless; in today’s social media era, we hide behind the façade of well-curated photos showing only the happy moments in our lives. Being vulnerable isn’t easy, but people find more profound connections when it happens. Understanding the intricacies of a complex Italian opera isn’t necessary to feel the sentiment. The emotions are as evident as Robinson’s genius.
The song first appeared on the album Make It Happen in 1967, though Wonder and Robinson didn’t think it was a hit. It wasn’t chosen as a single until the head of Motown’s fan club in England selected the song three years later.
The Miracles had struggled to succeed in the U.K., and Motown’s British distributor was looking for a breakthrough single. “The Tears of a Clown” was hiding in plain sight—like Pagliacci’s sadness—as the last song on the album, and Karen Spreadbury from the fan club suggested it as the next single. It shot to No. 1 in the U.K. Motown’s headquarters in Detroit took notice and released it as a single in the U.S., where it also reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 chart.
The Funk Brothers and British Ska
The English Beat covered the song in 1979, and another U.K. ska band, Madness, wrote “Bed and Breakfast Man” based on Bob Babbitt’s bass line from the original version of “The Tears of a Clown.”
American R&B music reached Jamaica with U.S. military broadcasts during and after World War II. R&B artists like Fats Domino and his song “Be My Guest,” which emphasizes the offbeat, planted the seeds for ska in the 1950s and later rocksteady and reggae. The horn syncopations on “The Tears of a Clown” share the rhythm, making it an easy transition to the ska and reggae sounds of The English Beat and Madness.
“The Tears of a Clown” is a sad Italian clown living inside a Detroit soul song, connecting with British bands playing Jamaican music that originated in the American South.
Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
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