The story behind Motown’s greatest lyric: “That’s it”
Berry Gordy was becoming an expert in monopolising the talent of Detroit back in the 1960s, amassing a roster which would elevate Motown Records from being yet another run-of-the-mill R&B label to being the defining sound of the American pop charts.
In addition to his pool of unparalleled vocal talents and the instrumental mastery of The Funk Brothers, he also had an arsenal of incredible songwriters at his disposal.
During the very early days of the Tamla label, in the days before it adopted the Motown moniker, Gordy himself routinely appeared in the songwriting credits of its output, and although his talents were dwarfed by the likes of Holland-Dozier-Holland, who came along later, he certainly knew his way around creating a hit single. It is no surprise, then, that by the end of the 1960s, he had presided over hundreds of them.
Even during those early days, though, Gordy was supported by a young Detroit musician by the name of Smokey Robinson. In time, the performer would establish his own group, The Miracles, among the defining outfits of the Motown roster, along with lending his songwriting talents to a plethora of other blossoming artists rising through the ranks of Hitsville USA.
Robinson was responsible for some of the label’s biggest hits – 79 of them, to be precise, giving him a bigger hit-rate than the aforementioned Holland-Dozier-Holland – either as a performer in his own right or a songwriter for others. His finest hour, however, came in 1965, at the peak of Motown’s golden age, when he struck upon the emotive mastery of ‘The Tracks of My Tears’.
Bizarrely, that particularly Miracles single was one of the rare 1965 releases from Motown that didn’t manage to break into the top ten, peaking at an insulting 16 in the US singles charts, but that didn’t stop it from becoming an utterly iconic single of the era, beloved by everybody from Linda Ronstadt to rock and roll’s anarchic axeman, Keith Richards.
In many ways, the song follows the Motown formula of being a catchy pop-soul song centred around heartbreak, yet Robinson’s lyrics feel far more emotive and affecting than the likes of ‘Stop! In The Name of Love’ or ‘My Guy’, for instance. You would be forgiven for assuming that the song’s lyrics were laboured over for months, with Robinson diving into the depths of his most vulnerable and tumultuous moments.
Seemingly, though, the songwriter struck upon the track almost by accident. “I came up with the first three lines of the chorus,” he told CBS News in 2023. “‘Take a good look at my face, see my smile looks out of place, if you look closer it’s easier to trace,’” which quickly led to an impenetrable case of writer’s block. “Trace what? ‘Trace that I’m here and you’re not’? No. ‘Trace …’ I went through 20 of those, you know?”
Eventually, then, it arrived in Robinson’s head fully formed; the lyric that would establish one of the greatest Motown songs of all time. “One morning, just by chance, I was shaving, and – somehow or other – the thought just came to me, ‘What if somebody had cried so much their tears left tracks on their face?’ I said, ‘That’s it.'”
Perhaps if Robinson had chosen to embrace his stubble on that fateful day, the lineage of his career and of Motown Records in general would have been far different. After all, ‘The Tracks of My Tears’ was one track which elevated Motown from being solely a hit factory to creating some of the most timeless, enduring pop songs ever to be released.
