You've Really Got a Hold on Me

Smokey Robinson wrote and sang this for the Miracles in 1962 and it reached the top ten in America early the next year, topping the R&B chart and becoming the group's second million seller. It is a slow Motown ballad with a lazy triplet feel, inspired by Sam Cooke's Bring It On Home to Me, and a lyric about being unable to leave someone even when sense suggests otherwise. Couples choose it because it is tender without being saccharine and because the tempo suits a slow dance that still has a pulse. The Beatles covered it on their second album, With the Beatles, in 1963, and Robinson wrote it in a New York hotel room while there on Motown business.