You Really Got A Hold On Me is not Smokey Robinson's best song lyrically. Best he can come up with her is "I don't like you but I love you". However, what makes the song great is in who it inspired to cover it, The Beatles of course, Lennon singing the song in his best 'I wish I was black' voice. It can be argued that The Beatles did Berry Gordy and his Motown label a very big favour in bringing Motown music to the ears of a white audience. Besides YRGAHOM, The Beatles also recorded covers of The Marvelettes 'Please Mr Postman' and Barrett Strong's 'Money', besides championing Mary Wells by hyping her record 'My Guy' and adding Mary to their touring support roster. This paved the way for Motown acts to tour the UK and be featured on any music show running on TV at the time. In the early 60s the coolest of the cool could be found with an original Oriole label copy of 'You Really Got A Hold On Me' under their arm.
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