Soul music legend Smokey Robinson, now 83, has dropped a brand new album, a conceptual one about intercourse referred to as Gasms. With it, he hopes to point out that older persons are nonetheless sexual beings. On this Guardian interview, he additionally talks about his relationships with Diana Ross, Marvin Gaye, and Berry Gordy, his struggles with habit, and the influence of Motown on race relations in America.
On the title observe, Robinson sings about eyegasms, eargasms, the entire gamut of gasms. If there’s any hazard of lacking the purpose, he throws in double entendres that verge on the only. He sings with the silky falsetto of yesteryear, the phrases completely phrased as ever. The album ranges from the exultant (“We’re one another’s ecstasy”) on Roll Round to the organic (“When you obtained an interior emptiness / Child, then make it a spot for me”) on I Slot in There. It is essential for him to point out that older persons are nonetheless sexual beings, he says. “Once I hear of grandfathers and grandmothers who’re 60 years outdated being talked about as for those who’re counting them out and placing them out to pasture, I believe it is ridiculous. It is a new period of life. I really feel 50.” He has no intention of turning into an outdated man, no matter his age.
