I Like It Like That (The Miracles song)

I Like It Like That was a 1964 hit song by Motown group The Miracles on its Tamla label subsidiary. It reached the Top 30 of the Billboard Pop chart, charting at #27 and the Top 10 of Cash Box R&B chart, peaking at #10.(Billboard Magazine's R&B chart was temporarily suspended during this time). This is not the Chris Kenner hit song of the same name, but rather, a Miracles original, written by Miracles members Smokey Robinson and Marv Tarplin, and is included on the group's first greatest hits album, "Greatest Hits from the Beginning". It was also the title song from their long-since deleted 1964 album of the same name.

Like many Miracles hit songs, "I Like It Like That" begins with Tarplin's guitar. It features a "live party" feel, similar to their earlier 1963 hit, "Mickey's Monkey". Smokey encourages everybody to "clap your hands now, everybody, we're gonna have some fun tonight...we're gonna sing and shout...knock ourselves out...and everything's gonna be alright". The other Miracles, Bobby, Ronnie, Pete, and Claudette, join in with their trademark harmony vocals, with chants of alright, and I like it like that as The Funk Brothers add additional instruments to the mix.

"I Like It Like That" was released during a period (1964) when Smokey and the Miracles were so busy touring as the headline act with the famed Motortown Revue shows, and writing big hits for other Motown acts, principally Mary Wells and The Temptations, that their own chart action suffered. Of the group's four single releases that year (the others were "Come On Do The Jerk", "(You Can't Let the Boy Overpower) The Man in You", and "That's What Love Is Made Of"), "I Like It Like That" was the only one to crack the Billboard Pop Top 30, while two songs that they wrote for the two aforementioned acts, "My Guy" and "My Girl" respectively, both reached #1 Pop. ("My Girl" was originally intended to be recorded by The Miracles, had they released it instead, it would have given them a badly needed big hit that year). Fortunately the following year, 1965, would prove to be The Miracles' biggest year ever.

"I Like It Like That" has inspired cover versions by Bobby Vee and Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. The song's B side, "You're So Fine And Sweet", featured a rare lead by Miracles second tenor Bobby Rogers (who had sung co-lead vocals with Smokey on the group's smash single "You've Really Got A Hold On Me" the previous year), and inspired a cover version by The Undertakers.