The 1960s File Feature
I'll Try Something New
"I'll Try Something New" — The Miracles Motown in Its Morning Light Imagine Detroit in the spring of 1962. Hitsville U.S.A. is a converted house on West Gran…
01 The Story
"I'll Try Something New" — The Miracles
Motown in Its Morning Light
Imagine Detroit in the spring of 1962. Hitsville U.S.A. is a converted house on West Grand Boulevard where something extraordinary is happening, song by song, session by session. The Miracles, led by the incomparable Smokey Robinson, are already among the label's brightest stars, having scored with "Shop Around" in 1960 and built a reputation as one of the sharpest vocal groups on the American circuit. In that atmosphere of constant creative momentum, "I'll Try Something New" arrived as a testament to the gentler, more romantic side of what Motown could produce.
The song was written by Smokey Robinson, as nearly everything the Miracles released during this period was. Robinson's songwriting gift was already becoming legendary within the industry, his ability to craft melodies that felt simultaneously simple and emotionally precise setting him apart from virtually every other writer of his era. "I'll Try Something New" showcased a particular tenderness in his work, a willingness to write from a place of pure, aching devotion without any of the harder edges that R&B sometimes demanded.
The Sound and the Session
The recording was issued on Tamla, the Motown subsidiary that served as the primary home for the Miracles' output during those early years. The production carried all the hallmarks of early Motown: the bright, live-room sound captured at Hitsville's Studio A, the precise vocal harmonies that the Miracles had polished through years of performing, and a rhythm section that walked the line between pop accessibility and R&B soul with remarkable elegance.
Smokey Robinson's lead vocal on the track is a study in restraint and warmth. Rather than reaching for melodrama, he builds the song's emotional charge through understatement, leaning into the higher registers of his falsetto with a delicacy that gives the track a quality closer to a whispered promise than a full-throated declaration. The backing vocals from the other Miracles, including Ronnie White, Pete Moore, Bobby Rogers, and Claudette Robinson, provide a cushion of sound that makes the whole thing feel like a conversation conducted in perfect harmony.
Chart Run and Reception
The single debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 on May 12, 1962, entering at position 99 before beginning a steady climb. By the end of June, it had reached its peak of number 39, on the chart dated June 30, 1962. The track spent ten weeks on the chart altogether, a solid run that confirmed the Miracles' consistent commercial presence even when a single did not break into the very top tier.
Ten weeks on the Hot 100 in 1962 meant something considerable: radio play across regional markets, steady sales through record stores and jukeboxes, and the kind of sustained public attention that built careers over time rather than in bursts. The Miracles were not chasing number ones with every release; they were establishing themselves as reliable hit-makers, a group whose records you bought because you trusted the name.
Smokey Robinson's Songwriting Legacy
When Bob Dylan famously called Smokey Robinson America's greatest living poet in the mid-1960s, he was pointing at something that tracks like "I'll Try Something New" make plainly audible. Robinson's lyrics worked through a combination of emotional honesty and imaginative metaphor, conjuring comparisons and images that felt fresh without being pretentious. The song's central promise, to go to extraordinary lengths to make the object of affection happy, draws on a tradition of romantic hyperbole but gives it a specificity and sincerity that elevates it beyond formula.
Robinson was still in his early twenties when he wrote and recorded this song, yet the emotional intelligence on display sounds like the product of someone who had spent decades studying what makes people feel understood. That precocity was a defining feature of early Motown, a label that somehow found and developed extraordinary talent at a rate that still seems improbable in retrospect.
Place in the Miracles' Catalog and Motown History
By 1962, the Miracles had already helped define what Motown was going to be. "I'll Try Something New" sits in the middle of an extraordinarily fertile period for the group, between "Shop Around" and the string of hits that would come later in the decade. The track was later re-recorded as a duet with Mary Wells for Motown in 1964, which became a notable version in its own right, but the original Miracles recording remains the foundational statement.
Listening to it now is to hear a young American musical institution finding its voice. The song carries the freshness of a movement just getting started, before the full apparatus of Motown's creative machinery had fully assembled itself. There is something irreplaceable in that quality. Put it on and hear 1962 in all its hopeful, searching energy.
"I'll Try Something New" — The Miracles' singular moment on the 1960s charts.
02 Song Meaning
"I'll Try Something New" — Themes and Legacy
The Promise as Emotional Architecture
At the center of "I'll Try Something New" is one of the oldest and most durable structures in love songs: the extravagant promise. The narrator offers to accomplish the seemingly impossible in service of the person they love, to conjure experiences and wonders that go beyond the ordinary. Smokey Robinson builds this promise carefully, using it not as a boast but as a declaration of willingness, a statement that says the depth of feeling involved justifies any effort.
This approach gave the song a quality that connected with listeners across demographic lines. The emotional logic is universal: when you love someone deeply, ordinary expressions feel inadequate. The impulse to reach for something extraordinary, to try something new in the service of devotion, is one that resonates regardless of age, background, or era.
Romantic Devotion in Early Motown
The early 1960s Motown catalog was, to a significant degree, a catalog of devotion. Song after song from the label's first years explored the textures of romantic feeling, from longing and jealousy to joy and heartbreak. "I'll Try Something New" sits at the gentler end of that spectrum, offering a portrait of love that is unclouded by doubt or conflict. The emotion on display is one of pure positive feeling, a determination to make the beloved happy through creativity and commitment.
This tone was partly strategic. Motown's crossover ambitions required music that could appeal to both Black radio audiences and the broader pop market, and love songs built on warmth and accessibility traveled well across those boundaries. But the strategy worked because the songwriting was genuine. Robinson was not writing to a formula; he was writing from observation of human feeling, and the tracks he produced during this period carry that authenticity.
The Cultural Context of 1962
In 1962, America was navigating a period of significant social tension. The civil rights movement was gathering force, and the country's racial landscape was under active contestation. Against that backdrop, Motown's music functioned in an interesting way: it brought Black artistry into mainstream American living rooms and car radios in a form that emphasized beauty, sophistication, and emotional universality.
Songs like "I'll Try Something New" were part of that project, even if they did not address political realities directly. The sophistication of the production and the refinement of the songwriting were themselves a form of cultural argument, a demonstration that Black artists could occupy the very top tier of American popular music. Motown understood this and pursued it with deliberate intensity.
Why It Still Resonates
The lasting appeal of "I'll Try Something New" comes down to the interplay between Robinson's melody and the emotional simplicity of his lyrical vision. The song does not try to be clever or subversive; it tries to be true to a feeling that everyone recognizes. That clarity gives it a timeless quality that more complex or stylistically rooted records sometimes lack.
The track's ten-week chart run in 1962, with a peak of number 39 on the Billboard Hot 100, placed it squarely in the middle tier of that year's pop landscape. In the decades since, its reputation has only grown, helped by its inclusion on Miracles compilations and the broader appreciation for early Motown as a foundational chapter in American pop history. It is a song that rewards listening at any age and in any era, because the feeling it describes is one that does not date.
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