This legendary musical artist gives all the credit to God for giving him the inspiration to write more than 4,000 songs, many of them beloved classics.
Motown superstar Smokey Robinson believes that God gives gifts to every person in this world, and that songwriting is his gift from God.
"I think God gives everybody gifts and everybody gets a gift. Some people never discover their gifts, some people never use their gifts, some people shove it aside and do something else — but everybody gets a gift," the writer of "Tears of a Clown," "I Second That Emotion" and "Cruisin'" told LifeZette in an interview.
Robinson said he has been blessed by God with the ability to find inspiration for writing songs figuratively out of thin air regardless of place and time.
He said such inspiration strikes him when he least expects it.
"I'm not a songwriter who needs a pattern. Like, I don't have to go away to the mountains for two weeks to get inspired," he said. "I could be on a plane and an idea comes to me — melody or words, and I write all the time."
In the interview, Robinson also commented on the state of today's music. He said it is sadly obvious that the level of songwriting has sharply deteriorated.
The Detroit-born founder of the Motown rhythm and blues vocal group The Miracles lamented that the lyrics of today's music are bombarding the world with negativity.
"There's always been negative music, hardcore music, but nowadays the negative gets the attention," Robinson said.
He said the negativity in the airwaves is adding to the negativity all around us. "We live in a world where the negative gets attention. We're bombarded by negativity. You look at the news and there's no good news, it's all about how many people got killed, what this storm did, what's going on with a war," he said.
Moreover, he noted that many of today's songs have sexually explicit lyrics, which should have been censored.
"I think the censors have relaxed a little bit from when I was starting out, of what could be said and played on the radio," Robinson said. "The censors are more lax than it was then."
On the ongoing U.S. presidential election campaign, Robinson could not hide his disappointment, saying it's "the biggest fiasco we've ever had."
However, he remains optimistic about the future. He hopes that whoever emerges as the winner in the Nov. 8 election will be a good choice for America.
