"I saw seven songs carried on the back of a breeze, blowing through the record from start to finish." The nearly eight-minute title track establishes the Quiet Storm not as a meteorological phenomenon providing ambience, but as an intangible stimulant flowing through Robinson's body: "A power source of tender force." In his review, writer Robert Christgau keyed in on the album's most important contribution: ".rhythmically it seems to respond more to his internal state than to any merely physical criterion." Indeed, this is soul music aiming not for the hips, but a deeper metaphysical connection between two intimate lovers. "I finally had the musical concept I'd been seeking since hearing What's Going On," Robinson later said. The album opens like radio theater: an impossibly high-pitched synth-produced whistle- our soft warning siren- is paired with wind sound effects, which gradually give way to a loping bassline that could have been drawn from countless 60s Motown hits.
"With 18 years of singing, writing, and producing behind him, he naturally passes over both self-celebration and prophecy in favor of love and happiness." "Robinson is moved neither by Marvin Gaye's macho sensibilities nor by Stevie Wonder's semi-mystical mental images, and he has more pop expertise than either," wrote Robert Palmer in Rolling Stone. Seamlessly updating the style of contemplative romantic soul music he'd invented with "You've Really Got a Hold On Me", "Ooo Baby Baby", "The Tracks of My Tears", and "More Love", Storm reasserted Robinson as a soul auteur. Robinson set out to make his own What's Going On, but whereas Gaye turned his focus so empathetically outward, Robinson looked inward. Even coming out of the tumultuous late 60s, politics never figured in Smokey's music. Here was an album rightfully celebrated for its political message that also managed to sound effortlessly smooth.
Gaye's 1971 suite What's Going On in particular vexed Robinson. Meanwhile, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye zoomed past him to become the label's- and to a degree, African-American popular music's- torchbearers. After setting the standard for Motown during the 1960s and being named vice president of the label, he'd split with the Miracles, and his first two post-Miracles solo albums (1973's Smokey and 1974's Pure Smokey) hadn't performed to his expectations. Listen to a 104-track (!) Quiet Storm playlist compiled by writer Eric Harvey on Spotify.īy 1974, Smokey Robinson was adrift. Underscore surveys undervalued artists, scenes, and eras of the musical past.
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