Sunday, August 18, 2024

"The Tracks of My Tears"

I recently listened to Colin Blunstone's Collected (for only the fourth time), specifically to hear his version of "The Tracks of My Tears" and see if it has the same features that I'd noticed in the original by Smokey Robinson & the Miracles.

At the end of the bridge, there's the line "My smile is my makeup I wear since my break up with you," sung to a melody something like this:


(Blunstone's version is even in the same key as the original, so I could re-use my notation excerpt from my post on how this line may have influenced the keyboard solo in an alternate take of the Zombies' "Nothing's Changed.")

After the initial D note, the melody repeats the same triplet until the phrase "break up with you," at which point it diverges.  These changes in the repeated sequence of pitches and in the rhythm musically illustrate that "break."

Because I've commented on Shakespeare references in other Zombies and Colin Blunstone songs, I feel I should mention that the idea of "the tracks of my tears" is basically the same as "With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks" in King Lear (I.iv.292), although this seems to be just coincidental.  In this video (starting at ~10:16), Smokey Robinson talks about the song a bit, including how he came up with the title phrase.

For what it's worth:  these features are also in the version by the Roulettes (a band that Russ Ballard and Robert Henrit were in before Argent), although that's a whole step lower, in F major.