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In 1967 Smokey Robinson was shopping for pearls for his wife Claudette at Hudson’s department store in Detroit when fellow songwriter Al Cleveland tried to say he seconded the motion and instead said he seconded the emotion. The two turned the slip into I Second That Emotion, a song in which the narrator refuses a partner’s games but promises to return real love if she offers it. Smokey Robinson and the Miracles recorded it in September 1967 in Motown’s Studio A, with Claudette Robinson, Pete Moore, Ronnie White and Bobby Rogers on backing vocals.

Robinson brought only a chord chart, and guitarists Marv Tarplin, Eddie Willis and Robert White invented their interlocking riffs on the spot. The single reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in December 1967, topped the R&B chart and became the Miracles’ sixth million seller. Motown recut it in 1969 with Diana Ross and the Supremes and the Temptations, Ross and Eddie Kendricks sharing lead. The British band Japan released a version in 1980 that failed, then reached No. 9 in the UK with a 1982 remix.

• Cash Box praised the original for its outstanding lead and well-worked team sound.
• Japan’s version featured David Sylvian on vocals and synths, Mick Karn on fretless bass and saxophone, and Richard Barbieri on keyboards.
• The Jerry Garcia Band performed the song 156 times between 1976 and 1994, and the Grateful Dead played it seven times.
• It appears on the soundtrack of The Big Chill and in the 2014 film Pride.
• In Madagascar (2005), a ship captain listens to it moments before penguins knock him out and hijack his vessel.