William L. "Billy" Griffin (born August 15, 1950 in Baltimore, Maryland)is an American singer and songwriter. He is best known for replacing Smokey Robinson as lead singer of The Miracles in 1972. 　　The Miracles left Motown in 1976, signing with Columbia Records. After two albums for Columbia, Griffin and Moore decided to retire from performing and focus on songwriting. In 1982, Griffin released his first solo album, Be With Me, which yielded the UK Singles Chart Top 20 hit "Hold Me Tighter in the Rain". The following year, Respect yielded the club hit, "Serious" which peaked at #64 in the UK chart. After a third album with Leon Ware, Griffin switched record label to Atlantic Records but despite completing an album, only one single "Believe It or Not" was released there before he was left without a recording contract. 　　In 1989, Griffin joined UK record producer Ian Levine's Motown-reunion project Motorcity Records, and was the first to release a single on the label, "First in Line". Griiffin also fronted a Miracles reunion with a new recording of "Love Machine". Griffin became a writer and backing vocals arranger for several of the other artists, and recordes a large number of tracks himself, but his album Technicolour was never released and the label collapsed in 1992. Most of his Motorcity recordings were released on the 1996 compilation Best Of Billy Griffin. 　　Levine and Griffin also landed a couple of hit singles for the UK soul band The Pasadenas and co-produced Take That's debut album, which including the hit singles "Could It Be Magic" (UK #3) and "I Found Heaven" (UK #15). They also worked with Levine's boy band, Bad Boys Inc. Griffin has written songs and sung backing vocals for Aretha Franklin, The O'Jays, Ronald Isley, Freda Payne, Edwin Starr, Evelyn Champagne King, Herb Alpert, Martine McCutcheon, The Emotions and many others. In 2006, Griffin released his latest solo album, Like Water. Griffin can be seen performing "Do It Baby" and "Love Machine" with The Miracles on the Motown/Universal DVD release: Smokey Robinson & The Miracles : The Definitive Performances 1963-1987.