No group mirrored the rise and fall of Motown as closely as the Miracles. When Berry Gordy used $800 and a dream to found Motown Records in 1958, Smokey Robinson was right there with him to drive trunkloads of 45s to local DJs. The Miracles were key players in Motown’s sixties dominance, cranking out a factory of hits for themselves and for other artists. And in 1972, both groups made decisions that, for many, spelled the end of their golden streak. Motown left Detroit for Los Angeles, and Smokey Robinson left the Miracles.
These moves were meant to signal greener pastures. Motown put Detroit at the forefront of R&B with a brand of sparkling pop-soul that is still unmistakeable. But by the end of the sixties, Detroit was in riotous turmoil, and Berry Gordy’s heart had shifted to the film industry. It was inevitable that Motown would leave the Motor City. Motown made lots of quality stuff after 1972, but the core of their musical identity was gone. Smokey Robinson was done with touring and wanted to focus on his new roles as a father and Motown’s Vice-President. When you know that, it's a strange twist that Motown’s highest-selling single was from the “new” Miracles’ love letter to Hollywood.
I’m happy to say the Miracles after Smokey flourished. Billy Griffin, who possessed a Smokey-like vocal range and “some writing ability”, became the new lead singer. Smokey Robinson acted out the friendliest breakup in pop music and executive-produced the Miracles’ next album, Renaissance. Renaissance is stupendous, but it was certainly no commercial rebirth. Luckily, they caught wind in 1974 with the silky and seductive “Do It Baby”. Peaking at #13, it gave the Miracles chart power that even Smokey hadn’t yet recaptured. And in 1975, nearly 20 years into their career, the Miracles took their deepest dive into unexplored territory.
City of Angels, a star-crossed “soul opera”, is the Miracles’ most ambitious work. Inspired by their years in Los Angeles and the concept albums that dominated rock for the last decade, it centres on Michael, a country boy who follows his starry-eyed girlfriend into Hollywood and gets caught in the fame machine himself. In many ways, this album was a subtle revolution. For the first time since Smokey, the Miracles were writing their own work: Billy Griffin and Warren “Pete” Moore co-wrote every tune. Moore pointed out that while concept albums were commonplace in white rock (eg. Sgt. Pepper’s, Tommy, Dark Side of the Moon), they were still a rarity among Black artists. Before Donna Summer’s run of genre-expanding classics, it was arguably the Miracles who pioneered the disco concept album.
If the City of Angels storyline isn’t exactly unprecedented, the Miracles still do a good job at keeping it entertaining. Michael is a few months behind his girl, Charlotte, when he finally arrives in L.A.. While he searches for her, an agent discovers Michael’s musical talent and gives him a stage name and stardom. At last, he finds Charlotte, but discovers she’s being “misused” by a gigolo. Unable to reconcile her own misery with realising Michael had also fallen into the Hollywood machine looking for her, she takes her own life with “too many pills”. In the end, Michael silently returns to the countryside: “one angel more in heaven, one less in the City of Angels.” The liner notes have helpful explainers for every song, and it does fill in a lot of gaps that the lyrics leave open. Still, I can’t shake the thought that a great concept album shouldn’t have to explain itself.
The first side captures the increasingly dizzy headrush of Hollywood. City of Angels opens with a choir, because it has to. It quickly segues into an energetic overture that sounds midway between Shaft and sports show music. (Fun to walk to.) The title track is a lush and surprisingly apprehensive love letter to Los Angeles, revealing Michael’s own reservations: “City of angels, you have faults in your land / People say you'll crumble and your beauty will no longer stand”. The party really starts with “Free Press”, probably the first banger written about underground newspapers. In the storyline, this is just before Michael meets his star agent, who tells him “what to wear, and where to go, and who to be seen with, and what to write.” Well, something has to explain “Ain’t Nobody Straight in L.A.”.
“Ain’t Nobody Straight in L.A.” is the album’s most daring and fascinating moment. In 1975, it was still incredibly ballsy for one of pop’s most established acts to dedicate a whole song to the gay scene in Los Angeles. To hear Billy put it, the biggest shock of L.A. was that “if I was hitting on girls, the men were hitting on me.” Today, it’s quite fascinating as a time capsule of that era; when AC/DC formed, did they know their name was already slang for “bisexual”? Musically, it’s a bright and playful latin-flavoured jam, with some pretty flamenco guitar touches and an insanely catchy hook. There’s a semi-intentionally hilarious dialogue on the back end where the Miracles decide to hit up a gay bar. If some of these lines wouldn’t be used in 2023, it’s at least coming from a place of no ill intent. The gay community supposedly loved this song and made it an underground hit, but it’s a shame Motown declined to make this a proper single, because it could’ve easily been another smash.
The middle of this album is the absolute climax of the Hollywood joyride. “Night Life” is a rapidfire jam about L.A.'s parties and playgrounds that swirls around in its own giddy excitement. And then there is “Love Machine.”
“Love Machine”, a disco song likening the Miracles to a horny robot, became the biggest selling single in Motown’s history. On paper, that is odd. How did this hit #1 in the US when Smokey never did? When you press play and hear Bobby Rogers growl “HOO-HOO-HOO YEAHHH” like the friggin’ Cookie Monster, all is explained. “Love Machine” is an incredibly goofy song, but it’s also ludicrously fun. This is the bit where our superstar Michael at last finds Charlotte, though you’d never catch any of that from the lyrics. The chorus, delivered almost like a chant - “I’m just a looove machine / And I won’t-work-for-nobody-but-you”, seems tailor-made to be bleated out in some drunken Magic Mike-wannabe routine. My only qualm with the seven-minute album version is that it loses energy by the fourth synth solo. The Miracles should’ve come back to close it out with the chorus, a lesson Chic would learn from.
The party can’t last. On “My Name is Michael”, Michael tries to reintroduce himself to Charlotte to no avail. (DIGRESSION: Billy Griffin says he wrote this for Michael Jackson’s solo album, presumably Forever, Michael, but missed the deadline. Imagine a world where he sang this tune instead of “Dear Michael”, and the Miracles had to come up with another protagonist name!) As it turns out, Charlotte can’t last either.
“His girl doesn’t make it, but he does.” Ronnie White’s summary of City of Angels finally comes true on “Poor Charlotte”, its tragic climax. As with Stevie Wonder’s “Too High” and Smokey Robinson’s “Holly”, Charlotte has fallen victim to lies, (implied) trafficking, and abuse from people and drugs. She takes “too many pills” and finally makes the headlines. If “Poor Charlotte” isn’t as devastating as those two - it’s a six minute crawl, and it seems they named her Charlotte just to rhyme with “starlet” - it has a car-crash-in-slow-motion inevitability that suits this album. The Miracles raise the tempo once more for “Waldo Roderick DeHammersmith”, where Michael finally meets Charlotte’s crooked captor at her funeral. It’s fun to clap along to the chorus, but it seems out of sequence and is the most dispensable song on this album. It’s time to go.
“Smog” is the weirdest and most ethereal track in the entire Miracles catalogue. Slow as molasses and drenched in meditative synths, it’s a complete departure from the rest of the album. “Smog” is a five minute meditation not only on Michael’s brief and frustrated spell in Hollywood, but also the chronic pollution of Los Angeles. The entranced group-lead vocals harken back to 50s doo-wop, the lyrics and melody take inspiration from War’s “The World is a Ghetto” and Marvin’s “Mercy Mercy Me”, and the siren-like synth anticipates 90s G-funk. When Billy Griffin joins that synth in wordless contemplation, it becomes a lament for something that feels beyond our worldly grasp. It’s taken me years to appreciate, but “Smog” is a beautiful and thoughtful conclusion to this journey.
Sadly, City of Angels is the Miracles’ last stop of artistic and commercial glory. The Miracles wrote and produced their follow-up The Power of Music, another concept album about, err, the power of music. Unfortunately, the songs lack any of the catchiness that made City of Angels so fun, and the album went unnoticed. When the Miracles felt they weren’t getting much promotion, even after giving their label its biggest single, they did what was once unthinkable: leave Motown. Their first single at Atlantic, 1977’s “Spy for the Brotherhood”, was immediately taken off air by the CIA, which all but put their momentum on the kibosh. After two albums, they quietly split, just as Michael silently departed the heady thrills of Los Angeles.
City of Angels deserves more recognition as a groundbreaking album. It’s easy to get lost in the theatrics and forget how unprecedented a “soul opera” or a disco concept album really was, especially one with a song explicitly about the gay community. That it’s still so entertaining speaks to how well-crafted this album’s songs, production and vocal performances are. They may not have recaptured Smokey Robinson’s poetry, but with City of Angels, the Miracles maintained the creativity and boundary-pushing which made them great in the first place. It’s a terrible shame the Miracles only received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2009. For me, they earned that prestige the day they made it their album cover.
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