That's What I Like

The hook: a love song disguised as a catalogue

Play "That's What I Like" to someone who has never heard it, and the first impression is pure indulgence. Gold, champagne, a condo, a flight somewhere warm, strawberries, silk sheets. It sounds like a rap video's prop cupboard turned into a chorus. Plenty of listeners in 2017 took it exactly that way, as another bright, slick celebration of money.

But listen to who is doing the giving. The narrator never brags about what he owns for its own sake. Every luxury he lists is something he wants to hand over. He is offering, not showing off. The song is a pitch, a sweet and slightly ridiculous one, from a man who wants to spoil the person he adores and who finds his own pleasure in watching her enjoy it. Its title, often read as a statement of personal taste, turns out to be a confession: what he really likes is her, happy.

That small twist is why the song feels warm rather than cold, and why it became the biggest hit from an album that was, at heart, an act of musical affection too.

Background: Bruno Mars goes back to the roller rink

By 2016, Bruno Mars had nothing left to prove. Born Peter Gene Hernandez in Honolulu, Hawaii, he had grown up performing in his family's oldies revue, famously doing an Elvis impression as a small child. He had moved to Los Angeles as a teenager, scraped through years of rejection, written hits for other artists, and then exploded as a solo star with "Just the Way You Are", "Grenade" and "Locked Out of Heaven". His 2014 collaboration with Mark Ronson, "Uptown Funk", spent more than three months at number one in the US and topped the UK chart too, becoming one of the defining songs of the decade.

The pressure after "Uptown Funk" was enormous. Instead of chasing the same retro-funk formula, Mars reportedly decided to make the kind of record he and his friends would have danced to as kids in the late 1980s and early 1990s: the polished, playful R&B of Babyface, Teddy Riley's new jack swing, Jodeci, Boyz II Men and Bobby Brown. The result was 24K Magic, released in November 2016. It was short, nine tracks, and almost defiantly joyful.

"That's What I Like" was written by a large team that had become Mars's creative family. His long-time partners Philip Lawrence and Christopher Brody Brown (working together as Shampoo Press & Curl) were joined by the songwriter James Fauntleroy and the production trio The Stereotypes, among others. The track is credited to both Shampoo Press & Curl and The Stereotypes as producers. Sessions for the album were famously meticulous; Mars has said in interviews that he would rework a single drum sound or a vocal ad-lib for days until it felt right.

Released as the album's second single in early 2017, following the brash title track, "That's What I Like" was a slower, smoother groove. It took its time climbing, then reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 2017. In the UK it was a solid top-20 hit, reportedly peaking in the mid-teens, and it became a staple of British radio and wedding playlists alike. For UK listeners there is also a neat connection: the sound the song pays homage to, that glossy American R&B of the early 1990s, was enormously popular in Britain at the time, pouring out of pirate radio and shaping homegrown acts. For a certain generation of British fans, Mars was handing back a sound they had once claimed as their own.

Core meaning: generosity as romance

The song opens with the narrator setting the scene of a night he wants to give someone. He talks about money in his pocket, about jewellery, about a fancy car. Very quickly, though, the focus shifts outward. The things he describes are things for her: he will take her to warm islands, he will get her whatever she wants in a shop, he will buy her dinner, he will set up a romantic evening with all the trimmings.

The verses are packed with deliberately over-the-top images. He promises a luxury apartment in Las Vegas. He offers a trip to Puerto Rico if she fancies it. He paints pictures of bubbling jacuzzis and of feeding each other fruit. The excess is the joke and the charm. Nobody is meant to take the list literally; it is the musical equivalent of someone saying "I would give you the moon."

What sits underneath is a classic idea in R&B: love expressed through provision and attention. The great slow jams of the 1990s were full of men promising to treat women like royalty, and Mars is consciously updating that tradition. He keeps the tone light. There is no possessiveness, no jealousy, no heartbreak. The narrator just wants to make someone feel cherished, and he finds that thrilling.

The chorus turns all of this into a simple statement of taste, essentially telling her that her pleasure is his pleasure. It is cheeky and confident, with a wink rather than a sneer. Then there is the bridge, which in many ways is the heart of the record. The music strips back, Mars's voice softens, and he slips into more intimate territory, promising devotion beyond the bling. It is the moment the song stops being a party and briefly becomes a love letter.

Musically, the meaning lives in the groove as much as the words. The beat is crisp and sparse, built on a rolling bassline, finger-snaps, and a skittering hi-hat pattern that nods to both 1990s R&B and modern trap. Mars layers his vocals in tight harmonies, the way the vocal groups he loved did, and peppers the track with spoken asides and playful ad-libs. It sounds like a man grinning while he sings, which is exactly the point.

Cultural context and legacy

"That's What I Like" arrived at an interesting moment. Pop in 2016 and 2017 was dominated by moody, minimal production and tropical house. Into that landscape, Mars brought something unashamedly bright and old-fashioned, but with modern drum programming that let it sit comfortably next to hip-hop on the radio. It proved that retro did not have to mean dusty.

The song's official video was famously simple. Instead of an expensive production full of the yachts and mansions the lyrics describe, it reportedly showed Mars alone against a plain white background, dancing in a loose shirt while animated graphics swirled around him, sketching the cars, the jewellery and the cityscapes as hand-drawn lines and splashes of colour. The choice was clever. It made the luxury feel like a daydream, something imagined rather than flaunted, and it put the focus on Mars's footwork and charisma. Viewers loved it, and the clip racked up a huge number of views on YouTube.

There was also a remix featuring the Atlanta rapper Gucci Mane, which pushed the song further into hip-hop territory and helped it on urban radio.

The real coronation came at the Grammy Awards in January 2018. "That's What I Like" won Song of the Year, Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance, and 24K Magic took Album of the Year and Record of the Year for its title track. Mars swept every category he was nominated in that night. It was a remarkable result for an album many critics had initially treated as a fun throwback rather than a serious statement. The win also sparked some debate: a few commentators felt the Recording Academy had played it safe compared with more politically charged albums in contention. But the songwriting craft, particularly on "That's What I Like", was hard to argue with.

The song has since become a karaoke favourite, a first-dance choice for couples who want something cheeky rather than sentimental, and a reliable floor-filler. It also helped open the door to Mars's next chapter. His 2021 project with Anderson .Paak, Silk Sonic, went even further back into 1970s soul, and you can hear the seeds of that adventure in this track's devotion to vocal-group harmonies and old-school romance.

Why it still resonates today

Part of the song's staying power is simply that it is fun. It does not ask anything heavy of the listener. In an era of anxious, inward-looking pop, there is real relief in a song whose only worry is how to make someone smile.

But there is something deeper too. The fantasy at the centre of "That's What I Like" is not really about money. It is about being the kind of person who can give freely, and about being on the receiving end of that kind of attention. Most of us will never fly a partner to Puerto Rico on a whim, but almost everyone understands the urge to treat someone, to plan a perfect evening, to make another person feel like the most important person in the room. The song inflates that ordinary impulse to cartoon size, and that is why it lands.

It also captures Bruno Mars at his most himself. He has always been an entertainer first, the kid from the Honolulu revue who wanted to make an audience happy. "That's What I Like" is a song about pleasing someone, sung by an artist whose whole career has been about pleasing people. That alignment of performer and message gives it an honesty that its glossy surface sometimes hides.

Nearly a decade on, the track still sounds clean and current, thanks to production that never leaned too hard on any passing trend. And it still does what its narrator promises: it shows up, it is generous, and it makes the room feel a little more golden.

How to dive deeper

🎧 Immerse in the sound

• 24K Magic (full album) — Hear "That's What I Like" in its natural habitat, between the swaggering title track and the slow-burn ballads. At just nine songs, the album plays like one long night out, and the order of tracks tells its own small story of flirtation, celebration and romance.
• Silk Sonic, An Evening with Silk Sonic — Mars and Anderson .Paak took the vocal-harmony love of this era and travelled back to 1970s soul. Listening after "That's What I Like" shows how far Mars was willing to push his devotion to the past, and how much fun he has doing it.
• Babyface and Boyz II Men's early-1990s records — These are the blueprints Mars was reportedly studying. Put on a classic slow jam from that period and you will hear the same blend of tenderness, polish and playful confidence he reworked for a new generation.

📚 Follow the story

• Bruno Mars's interviews around the 24K Magic era — Mars spoke at length to music magazines and on podcasts about his obsessive studio process and his desire to recreate the feeling of his childhood favourites. Reading them reveals how much painstaking work went into a song that sounds effortless.
• Coverage of the 2018 Grammy Awards — The night Mars swept every category he was nominated in is a fascinating snapshot of pop culture at the time. Reports and think pieces from that week capture both the celebration and the debate over what the Academy chose to reward.
• Histories of new jack swing and 1990s R&B — Books and long-form articles on Teddy Riley, LaFace Records and the vocal-group boom give you the cultural map behind this song. Once you know the tradition, every harmony and ad-lib on the track becomes a deliberate tribute.

🌍 Visit the places

• Honolulu, Hawaii — Mars grew up in Waikiki, performing with his family in a show that celebrated oldies and Elvis. Walking around the area helps you understand where his love of entertaining, and of music from earlier decades, first took root.
• Las Vegas, Nevada — The song's fantasy includes a luxury condo in Vegas, and the city has long been a second home for Mars's showmanship through his headline residencies on the Strip. Seeing the neon at night, you understand why it works as a symbol of shameless, joyful excess.
• San Juan, Puerto Rico — The island is one of the getaways the narrator dangles in front of his love interest. Its colourful old town and warm beaches are the perfect real-world version of the escapist daydream the song sells.

🎸 Experience it yourself

• Learn the dance from the video — The official clip is essentially one long dance performance against a white backdrop, and fans have broken down the moves in countless tutorials. Trying the footwork yourself is the quickest way to appreciate how much rhythm and charm Mars packs into a few seconds.
• Sing the layered harmonies with friends — The track's backing vocals are stacked in the style of classic R&B groups. Splitting the parts between a few singers at karaoke, or around a piano, reveals how cleverly the song is arranged.
• Plan a "that's what I like" evening for someone — Take the song's real message literally, in a smaller and saner way. Cook a favourite meal, buy the strawberries, put on the record, and see how much more fun it is to give than to receive.

🎵 Listen to this song