That What I Like Lyrics

Working With That What I Like Lyrics — A Practical Guide

I ran into this a while back when a friend of mine was trying to sync a vocal track to a demo and kept mismatching the phrasing. The song is Bruno Mars' 2017 single "That's What I Like," produced by Bruno, Christopher "Brody" Brown, and Ray Romulus. It peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became one of the most streamed tracks of that year. The structure is straightforward but deceptively tricky to work with if you're doing anything beyond casual listening. I can't reproduce the full lyrical content here because it's copyrighted material owned by the publishers and the artist's label. What I can tell you is that the lyrics follow a fairly standard pop structure — verse, pre-chorus, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, final chorus — and the vocal melody sits mostly in the upper mid-range, which matters if you're transcribing or pitching it for karaoke or cover purposes. If you need the full official lyrics, the licensed sources are LyricFind via major music platforms, Genius, or the publisher's website. Those are the places to go if you're verifying something line by line. The common pitfall people hit with this track is assuming the chorus is the hardest part to replicate. It's not. The pre-chorus does the heavy lifting rhythmically because Mars switches to a tighter syncopated delivery right before the hook drops. I spent probably two hours once trying to get a cover vocalist to nail the timing on the pre-chorus alone before I realized the breath marks were misplaced in every chart I found online. The workaround was pulling the stems from the official session and marking the breath points myself by ear. Takes about twenty minutes if you know what to listen for.

Here's what most beginners miss when they're working with these kinds of lyrics: the melodic contour in the verses is almost conversational. Mars isn't doing wide intervals. He's staying within a fourth or fifth, which makes it look simple on paper but actually requires precise microtonal control to sound natural. When I've seen people try to sing along without hearing the original closely, they tend to flatten the subtle pitch bends on words like "baby" and "way." Those bends are where the groove lives, not the notes themselves. Another thing worth noting is the song's key and tempo. It's in Fminor at roughly 112 BPM. The chord progression leans heavily on the i–VII–VI pattern, which is why it sounds both modern and nostalgic at the same time. If you're transposing for a vocal range that doesn't sit comfortably in Fminor, dropping to E minor usually preserves the color without losing the vibe. Raising it goes too bright for the arrangement. The bridge is where the track gets interesting harmonically. It modulates slightly and introduces a secondary dominant that resolves back into the final chorus. That resolution is what gives the song its emotional lift in the last section. If you're analyzing this for a class or just curious, that moment is worth isolating. It's easy to glide past it because it only lasts a couple bars, but it's doing most of the structural work in the second half of the song.

For anyone looking to use this for a project — cover, sample clearance research, vocal coaching, whatever — the practical steps are: get the official chart or a verified transcription from a licensed source, match the capo or transposition to your vocal range, and spend time on the pre-chorus phrasing before you worry about the chorus. The chorus will take care of itself if you get the setup right. The main downside to relying on user-generated lyric sites for this track is inconsistency. Different sites have different interpretations of certain words, especially in the verses where the delivery is mumbled enough to be ambiguous. I've seen at least three different spellings of the same line across popular sites. Cross-reference at least two sources and default to the official video or audio if they conflict. If you just want to listen to the track with the lyrics displayed, Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music all have licensed sync lyrics built in. They update automatically and are usually accurate enough for casual use. For anything requiring precision — performance, transcription, analysis — go straight to the publisher or a paid service like Songtext or Musixmatch's licensed feed.