SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM (4)
By:
October 13, 2025
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… ska records! PLAYLIST HERE. Series edited by Josh Glenn.
Great cover versions of great songs, the best ones, are duck-rabbits. Like the famous illustration beloved of Wittgenstein and Kuhn, they shift perception without warning: sometimes a cover seems better than the original, sometimes not as good. On different occasions, in different moods, you just can’t decide.
The Beat’s version of “The Tears of a Clown,” released in 1979, pays glorious tribute to a Motown classic of broken-heart bravery. First recorded by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles in 1967, it was only released as a single in 1970, when it reached number one on UK charts, higher than the original. This would inspire the frantic two-tone ska reboot nine years later.
The Miracles version features deftly rhyming lyrics by Smokey but the melody came from Stevie Wonder and Hank Crosby, who also produced. Musically, the song begins as a march, complete with soaring flutes, before grooving into the bass line. The Beat’s cover turns the looping sad rhythms of the layered Motown sound into a whippy dance anthem, a double-A-side single with their “Ranking Full Stop.” It was just one of the handful of gems on the North American version of their excellent 1980 dance-to-the-whole-thing LP I Just Can’t Stop It.
Ranking Roger, Black co-frontman of the Beat alongside heartthrob Dave Wakeling, is credited on the track with vocals and “toasting,” aka Jamaican-style DJ rap. He sings the word “clown” in drawn-out patois, to sound like “clone.” The original bassoon gives way to a piercing ska horn section, mostly tenor saxophone, including a rousing solo at the bridge. That familiar ten-note opening progression is picked out on solo guitar quickly joined by jangly musical mates. You just can’t stop it! Top of the Pops videos show Ranking Roger coolly executing the arm-swing dub step that dominated Eighties dancefloors. You can still see middle-aged men moving this way at their daughters’ weddings.
Sad to say, Smokey has lately made news over sexual harassment charges. In happier days, he had a small-bore genius with lyrics. Who else would have thought to rhyme “keep my feelings hid” with “just like Pagliacci did” — one of the greatest pop/opera crossover moves in music history. Wakeling gives the rest of the lyric a breathless plaintive quality altogether different from Smokey’s high-tenor blues vibe, but still a perfect poetic match to this miniature story of Stoic disguise of grief. Sometimes Sad Clown is the only role that meets the case. (See “The Tracks of My Tears,” another Miracles miracle that was inspiration for a heartbreaking duck-rabbit cover by Linda Ronstadt.)
The original “Tears” features a backing-vocal tribute line that links it to The Platters’ 1955 hit “The Great Pretender,” which also references feeling-hiding clowns. The Beat version has all this pathos and more — but somehow also magnificently less, stripped down and supple, and you know, fuck art, you can dance to it.
SKANK YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Lucy Sante on Margarita’s WOMAN COME | Douglas Wolk on Millie’s MAYFAIR | Lynn Peril on Prince Buster’s TEN COMMANDMENTS | Mark Kingwell on The [English] Beat’s TEARS OF A CLOWN | Annie Nocenti on Jimmy Cliff’s MISS JAMAICA | Mariane Cara on The Selecter’s ON MY RADIO | Adam McGovern on The Specials’ GHOST TOWN | Josh Glenn on The Ethiopians’ TRAIN TO SKAVILLE | Susannah Breslin on The [English] Beat’s MIRROR IN THE BATHROOM | Carl Wilson on Prince Buster / Madness’s ONE STEP BEYOND | Carlo Rotella on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ THE IMPRESSION THAT I GET | Rani Som on The Bodysnatchers’ EASY LIFE | David Cantwell on Desmond Dekker’s 007 (SHANTY TOWN) | Annie Zaleski on The Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ SOME DAY I SUPPOSE | Mimi Lipson on Folkes Brothers’ / Count Ossie’s OH CAROLINA | Alix Lambert on The Specials’ TOO MUCH TOO YOUNG | Marc Weidenbaum on Dandy Livingstone’s RUDY, A MESSAGE TO YOU | Heather Quinlan on Fishbone’s MA & PA | Will Hermes on The English Beat’s WHINE & GRINE / STAND DOWN MARGARET | Peter Doyle on The Skatalites’ GUNS OF NAVARONE | James Parker on The [English] Beat’s SAVE IT FOR LATER | Brian Berger on The Upsetters’ RETURN OF DJANGO | Francesca Royster on Joya Landis’ ANGEL OF THE MORNING | Deborah Wassertzug on The Bodysnatchers’ TOO EXPERIENCED | Dan Reines on The Untouchables’ I SPY FOR THE FBI.
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