Cruisin'

Smokey Robinson told The Guardian's 1000 Songs Everyone Must Hear supplement that when he wrote this song, his guitarist Marv Tarplin had already written the music. Smokey added: "He put it on cassette and gave it to me to write the lyric. As it turned out, it took me five years to write. I had the music, and that music is so intimate and sensual, but I couldn't get the words. Then one day I got: 'You're gonna fly away and I'm glad you're coming my way.' And then I was driving my car down Sunset Boulevard and I heard that song by the Rascals, 'Groovin' and I thought, 'That's it! Grooving.' But then, no, it wasn't intimate enough, it wasn't sensual enough for the music, and that's when I thought of 'cruisin.' You'd be surprised by how many people speculate on what Cruisin' means, 'Cruisin'' is a word that I leave up to the listener. When you're with the person you're with, and you feel you're cruisin', it's whatever you want it to be."

Notable covers include a 1995 one by soul singer D'Angelo, which peaked at #53 in the US and a version by Gwyneth Paltrow and Huey Lewis for the 2000 movie Duets, which topped the charts in Australia.