Some jobs in music are difficult, but being asked to replace Smokey Robinson is another. When Robinson stepped away from The Miracles in the early seventies, Billy Griffin inherited a microphone attached to one of Motown’s most recognizable voices.
Rather than trying to imitate Smokey, Griffin brought his own youthful tenor to the group, helping launch a second chapter that would eventually produce seven studio albums and hits such as “Do It Baby” and the chart-topping “Love Machine.” But before those records arrived, there was Renaissance.
Released in 1973, The Miracles’ first studio album without Smokey featured one of their most overlooked heartbreak records: “I Didn’t Realize the Show Was Over,” this week’s Slow Jam Saturday Selection.
Written by Richard Hutch and future The Mack soundtrack architect Willie Hutch, who also produced the track, the song uses a simple but effective theatrical metaphor.
Griffin plays a man who has spent so much time taking his woman for granted that he fails to recognize she has already reached her breaking point. In his mind, they are still going through another scene. To her, the curtain has already fallen. That realization gives Griffin plenty to work with vocally. He never sounds like he is auditioning to become Smokey Robinson 2.0.
Instead, his higher register carries a different kind of desperation. There is regret in the performance, but there is also disbelief—the sound of a man realizing much too late that apologies do not automatically earn an encore.
And placing “I Didn’t Realize the Show Was Over” at the end of Renaissance gives the song an unintentionally brilliant second meaning.
At the time, plenty of listeners probably wondered whether The Miracles’ show was over too. Smokey Robinson had been the face and voice of the group for years.
Yet Griffin, Pete Moore, Ronnie White and Bobby Rogers would prove there was still plenty of music left in them. Two years later, City of Angels would produce “Love Machine,” giving The Miracles their first No. 1 pop single. That makes “I Didn’t Realize the Show Was Over” feel almost prophetic in hindsight.
The relationship in the song may have ended, but for The Miracles themselves? The second act was just getting started.
Final Grade: B+
