Album: How Do You Like It? (1963)
Charted: 1 17
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Songfacts®:

  • The Beatles and Gerry & The Pacemakers were the first two acts to sign with Brian Epstein, and for a time the two bands had their own private battle at the top of the UK charts. The Pacemakers' Mitch Murray-penned "How Do You Do It?" spent three weeks at the summit in April 1963, to be replaced at the peak position by The Beatles' first chart-topper, "From Me to You." Seven weeks later the Gerry Marsden-fronted band knocked the Fab Four off #1 with "I Like It."

    When Gerry & The Pacemakers released their debut LP How Do You Like It? in October 1963, the album climbed to #2, impeded by The Beatles' Please Please Me longplayer. By then two other UK Liverpool groups, The Searchers and Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, had topped the UK singles charts and the Merseybeat phenomenon was beginning to catch the attention of the British press.
  • Like "How Do You Do It?" Mitch Murray wrote this song. Lyrically both songs share a love-struck cheekiness with a touch of innuendo. However, unlike the band's debut single, the singer's attraction on this song is reciprocated.
  • Musically both Gerry & The Pacemakers' first two singles had a similar clattering guitar-dominated pop sound, which Gerry Marsden admitted in 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh initially concerned him. "Although I liked it, I wasn't sure about it because it had the same chords and the same feel as our first hit," he said. "However, everybody felt that it had a lively spirit that would do the trick. It went to #1 and I was happy to be proved wrong and I'm still singing it today."
  • John Lennon had offered "Hello Little Girl" to The Pacemakers for their follow-up to "How Do You Do It." According to Mitch Murray, Lennon threatened to thump him if Gerry Marsden and his bandmates went for "I Like It." The Beatle didn't thump Murray, and instead he gave his tune to another Liverpudlian group, The Fourmost, for whom it became a UK #9 hit.
  • When Gerry & The Pacemakers reached the top of the UK charts with this song, they became the first act to score #1 with their first two releases. They got the hat trick when their third single, "You'll Never Walk Alone," also reached the summit.
  • The Scottish punk group the Rezillos covered this on their 1978 debut album Can't Stand the Rezillos.
  • A cover version, sung by a child, was used in a late 1990s Yoplait Petits Filous advert.

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