Robinson is duly recognized as one of our greatest songwriters, but he may be under-recognized as a live performer. It would be a cliché to call Smokey Robinson and Gladys Knight“National treasures,”but both most certainly are. Both have been music royalty longer than many of the fans at their Hollywood Bowl concert on Friday (July 24) have been alive.
Robinson and his band, The Miracles, first cracked the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 1961 with“Shop Around.” Knight and her group, The Pips, first cracked the top 10 on that chart five months later with the doo-wop-shaded“Every Beat of My Heart.” Robinson, 86, and Knight, 82, both have musical legacies that are strong and secure.
(Both of their groups ranked in the top 20 on Billboard‘s list“The 50 Best R&B Groups of All Time: Staff Picks,”which was published last month. ) The only question now is: How are they in concert in 2026? Robinson hasn’t fell short of a step.
He sang well, moved well and was a master showman. He is duly recognized as one of our greatest songwriters, but he may be under-recognized as a live performer. He was spry and agile throughout his headlining set.
He was also personable, speaking warmly about Knight, who he stated he’s known since they were teenagers (“One of the greatest voices of our time”) and doing a spot-on and very funny impression of Stevie Wonder’s head-turning mannerisms (by way of introducing“The Tears of a Clown,”which the two music legends cowrote with Henry Cosby). That song, Robinson’s only No. 1 Hot 100 hit as a performer, may be the most ebullient-sounding song ever written about a heartbroken man.
My only criticism of Robinson’s set: An audience participation bit on“Cruisin’”(which side of the house can sing louder? ) that was tedious and endless. For this tired exercise, he left out such gems as“Shop Around,”“Mickey’s Monkey”and“More Love”?
Knight still has moments where she can summon the fire and passion that have made her such a beloved singer for so many years. But many of her songs were truncated and re-arranged to better suit her current capabilities. She relied heavily on her three back-up singers, who even took lead parts on occasion.
She didn’t introduce them, or any of her six musicians, or speak to the audience in any meaningful way beyond banalities like“You’re so beautiful.” She never mentioned Robinson. Knight has been one of my favorite singers since I first got into music.
She is truly a one-of-a-kind singer, capable of both thrilling firepower and conversational ease, often in the same song. But she barely got through this show, and only by leaning heavily on her backup singers. Artists need to know when it’s time to bow out gracefully.
Here are seven highlights from Robinson and Knight’s opening night performance at the Hollywood Bowl on Friday (July 24). It was the first of two nights of their show, dubbed“Just the Two of Us.” And no, they didn’t perform together or include that 1981 Grover Washington Jr.
/Bill Withers collab in either of their individual sets. (A missed opportunity. ) Knight performed“The Nitty Gritty,”her 1969 hit with the Pips, in a medley with The Jacksons’ 1978 smash“Shake Your Body (Down to the Ground).”
This gave us a new way of hearing the song. She later incorporated a bit of Luther Vandross’ 1981 classic“Never Too Much”into another song. Knight and her backup singers performed back-to-back songs by gospel stars:“Stand”(a 1996 song by Donnie McClurkin) and“Take Me to the King”(a Kirk Franklin composition that Tamela Mann recorded in 2012).
Gospel has long been a part of Knight’s musical make-up. She clinched her two most recent Grammys in gospel categories, following two earlier clinches in pop, two in R&B and one in traditional R&B. Knight performed three songs by Jim Weatherly (“Neither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye),”“Midnight Train to Georgia”and“Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me”) and two by Curtis Mayfield (“On and On”and“Make Yours a Happy Home,”both from the 1974 Claudine soundtrack).
Weatherly and Mayfield, who are both in the Songwriters Hall of Fame, played to different sides of Knight’s musical personality — the pop side and the R&B side, to oversimplify. Unfortunately, she didn’t tell us about working with either of them or even mention any of the songwriters’ names. “Midnight Train to Georgia,”a true American classic, was the group’s only No.
1 Hot 100 hit, though Knight landed another No. 1 on that chart as a featured vocalist on Dionne & Friends’“That’s What Friends Are For”(which she also included in the set). What’s Robinson’s most beloved song?
There’s no shortage of strong candidates:“My Girl,”“The Tracks of My Tears,”“You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me.” But based on Friday night’s show the answer is“Ooh Baby Baby,”the exquisite Miracles’ ballad which made the top 10 on the Hot 100 in 1965 (and which Linda Ronstadt brought back to the top 10 in 1979). The audience’s applause lasted for several minutes, after which Robinson stated“It’s very hard to make me speechless.
You just did.” Robinson played two songs from his 1975 album A Quiet Storm, which as he noted assisted inspire a radio format. He sang the title track (which he co-wrote with Rose Jones) and“The Agony and the Ecstasy.”
While he was fronting The Miracles, Robinson took time to write several songs for The Temptations. He included three of those songs in a row in his set:“The Way You Do the Things You Do,”“Get Ready”and“My Girl.” Robinson has long been regarded as one of our greatest songwriters.
He received the Songwriters Hall of Fame’s top award, the Johnny Mercer Award, in 2005 and the Gershwin Prize for Beloved Song in 2014. Given that, it’s mind-boggling that he clinched his only competitive Grammy (best male R&B vocal performance) for a song he didn’t write —“Just to See Her”(which was written by Jimmy George and Louis Pardini). That great 1987 hit was in the set.
Robinson closed his show with another cover, of William DeVaughn’s 1974 hit“Be Thankful for What You Got”(which DeVaughn wrote). Robinson locked into a groove on the song, giving it a harder edge than DeVaughn’s mellow original recording. The song is the opening track on Robinson’s 2025 album What the World Needs Now, which is comprised of inspirational songs.