Genre

Move it in, move it ’round, disco lady

Posted on by brucehhackett

In 1977, the famous film critic Pauline Kael, writing about the iconic disco-themed movie “Saturday Night Fever,” said the film and disco music itself touched on “something deeply romantic, the need to move, to dance, and the need to be who you’d like to be. Nirvana is the dance; when the music stops, you return to being ordinary.”

Maybe so, but another critic made fun of the vapidity of disco music’s lyrics by describing the genre as “like a beautiful woman with a great body and no brains.”

You could make the same case about almost any sub-genre of rock music where lyrics are decidedly an afterthought to the rhythm and melody. But disco tends to feature repetitive, straightforward words that intentionally avoid deeper meaning that might distract listeners from the focus, which is TO DANCE. “Most of these songs were meant to be pure escapism,” said legendary music historian Casey Kasey, “usually centered on sex, dancing, or even instructions about dance moves.”

So do people remember the lyrics to their favorite disco songs? Sure, some of them, I suppose. But I submit that disco lyrics, by and large, just aren’t very memorable. Not to me, anyway. Still, I’m eager to give my readers the opportunity to prove me wrong.

So in my latest edition of Hack’s Back Pages Lyrics Quiz, I am focusing on 15 lyrics from popular disco songs of the ’70s.

I’m betting that most people, even those who consider themselves big fans of disco, will struggle to recognize the majority of these 15 lyrical selections. I pay considerable attention to lyrics, and I’m fairly certain I would score poorly if I were to be presented these lyrics in a quiz format devised by someone else. But who knows? Give it a try!

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1 “Our love is like a ship on the ocean, /We’ve been sailing with a cargo full of love and devotion…”

2 “Baby, baby, let’s get together, /Honey, honey, me and you, /And do the things, ah, do the things that we like to do…”

3 “She knows she’s built and knows how to please, /Sure enough can knock a strong man to his knees…”

4 “Go on, go, walk out the door, /Turn around now, you’re not welcome anymore…”

5 “Yeah, they were dancin’ and singin’, and movin’ to the groovin’, /And just when it hit me, somebody turned around and shouted…”

6 “Well, you can tell by the way I use my walk, I’m a woman’s man, no time to talk…”

7 “Young man, are you listening to me? /I said, young man, what do you wanna be?…”

8 “Anybody could be that guy, /Night is young and the music’s high…”

9 “Ah, if there’s a cure for this, I don’t want it, don’t want it, /If there’s a remedy, I’ll run from it, from it…”

10 “You started this fire down in my soul, /Now can’t you see it’s burning out of control?…”

11 “Everyone can see we’re together as we walk on by, /And we fly just like birds of a feather, /I won’t tell no lie…”

12 “The heat was on, rising to the top, /Everybody going strong, and that is when my spark got hot…”

13 “Wanna share my love with a warm blooded lover, /Wanna bring a wild man back home…”

14 “Gotta make a move to a town that’s right for me, /Town to keep me movin’, keep me groovin’ with some energy…”

15 “Lovely is the feelin’ now, /Fever, temperature’s risin’ now, /Power is the force, the vow…”

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(Scroll down for the answers)

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Answers:

1 “Rock the Boat,” The Hues Corporation, 1974

A dance to “Rock the Boat” is commonly performed at weddings and birthday parties, involving many people sitting down in a row and “rowing” a boat to the tune of the song. Songwriter/trumpeter Wally Holmes wrote this track for The Hues Corporation and, despite the producer finding the lyrics “trite,” they recorded it for their 1973 debut LP and released it as the third single from the album. It stalled on the charts until New York City discos began playing it, after which it took off and became a #1 hit in the summer of 1974, and is considered the first non-instrumental disco song to top the pop charts. At wedding receptions, I’ve seen people sitting in rows of chairs pretending to be rowing a boat across the dance floor.

2 “Get Down Tonight,” KC & The Sunshine Band, 1975

Generally speaking, disco songs were about dancing or sex, or both. This one is overtly about both with lyrics that endlessly repeat, “Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight.” Harry “KC” Casey and bassist/producer Richard Finch co-wrote it for Casey’s group, urging people to hit the dance floor and entertain ideas of hooking up later in the evening. It became the first of five #1 hits for them between 1975 and 1979.

3 “Brick House,” The Commodores, 1977

While most of The Commodores’ hit singles were ballads, a few were funk-based dance songs, and none has had more longevity than this uber-popular track that reached #5 on pop charts in 1977. Lionel Richie and his five bandmates co-wrote this song based on the old saying “built like a brick shithouse,” meaning sturdy and strong. In this case, the reference was to a voluptuous, big-boned woman: “I like ladies stacked, and that’s a fact… How can she lose with the stuff she use? 36-24-36, what a winning hand…”

4 “I Will Survive,” Gloria Gaynor, 1978

In 1976, songwriter Dino Fekaris had just been let go from his job as a staff writer at Motown Records. Dejected, he turned on the radio and heard “Generation,” a song he’d written for Rare Earth, which he took as a good omen. “I’m going to be all right,” he said. “I’ll make it as a songwriter. I will survive!” The song’s lyrics describe the narrator’s discovery of personal strength following an initially devastating setback. As recorded by Gaynor, the song became regarded as an anthem of female empowerment, reaching #1 in early 1979.

5 “Play That Funky Music,” Wild Cherry, 1976

Wild Cherry was a hard rock cover band out of Pittsburgh in the early/mid 1970s, but with the advent of the disco era, the group found it increasingly difficult to book gigs when dance bands were far more lucrative for club owners. Lead vocalist/guitarist Rob Parissi attempted to persuade his bandmates to incorporate dance tunes into their sets, but they resisted. While playing to a predominantly black audience one night, a patron approached and said, “Are you going to play some funky music, white boys?” Parissi grabbed a pen and wrote the song in about five minutes with lyrics that literally describe the predicament of a hard rock band adjusting to the disco era. It reached #1 two months later.

6 “Stayin’ Alive,” The Bee Gees, 1977

As one of several big Bee Gees hits on the soundtrack LP for “Saturday Night Fever,” this track epitomizes the escapism of dancing at the disco. And yet, as Barry Gibb pointed out, “The subject matter of ‘Stayin’ Alive’ is actually quite a serious one. It’s about survival on the streets of New York City, and the lyrics actually talk about that — people crying out for help. Everybody struggles against the world, fighting all the bullshit and things that can drag you down, and it really is a victory just to survive.” It’s one of the few disco tunes to have lyrics with a deeper meaning. 

7 “Y.M.C.A.,” The Village People, 1978

French producer Jacques Morali was in New York and saw a sign for the YMCA and asked Village People singer Victor Willis what it meant. The two men decided it might make a good subject for a song, although the YMCA’s lawyers threatened to sue for trademark infringement. Willis claimed he wrote it as a reflection of where young urban blacks could find wholesome fun activities like swimming and basketball, but the gay community had viewed the YMCA as a popular cruising spot, and it became a proud gay anthem on the dance floors. With its cheerleader-like choreography spelling out the letters, it’s still enormously popular at virtually every wedding reception ever since.

8 “Dancing Queen,” ABBA, 1976

ABBA had been wildly successful in their native Sweden and elsewhere in Europe since their 1972 debut, and a few singles reached the Top 20 in the US as well, but it was the joyous disco hit “Dancing Queen” in late 1976 that made them superstars. Critics oohed and aahed over the “languid, seductive verses and dramatic chorus that ascends to heart-tugging high notes.” Lyrically, the song focuses on the anticipation of an evening at the disco, culminating in the sheer exhilaration of dancing on a crowded dance floor amidst flashing lights.

9 “Love Hangover,” Diana Ross, 1976

This successful tune from the singer’s 1976 LP “Diana Ross” was released as a single to compete with another version released concurrently by The 5th Dimension. Ross’s version won handily, becoming an international #1 hit. During the recording session, producer Hal Davis had a strobe light put in the studio to put Ross in “a disco mindset,” and the project was such a success that Ross reinvented herself as a disco diva that year, which served her well throughout the genre’s era..

10 “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” Thelma Houston, 1976

The legendary songwriting team of Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff wrote this irresistible tune for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, with Teddy Pendergrass on lead vocals, but it wasn’t released as a single. When Thelma Houston, a recording artist with Motown whose work had gone largely unnoticed, included her own version of “Don’t Leave Me This Way” on her 1976 LP “Any Way You Like It,” it rocketed up the pop charts to reach #1 in April 1977, and also won a Grammy for Best R&B Vocal Performance.

11 “We Are Family,” Sister Sledge, 1979

Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, the songwriting/producing team behind the ’70s disco band Chic, also were involved in writing and producing material for other up-and-coming acts on their label. An executive described one of those, Sister Sledge, as a quartet of sisters who grew up singing in church in Philadelphia. Rodgers and Edwards took their biographical story and turned it into lyrics, with the obvious title “We Are Family.” The song, which reached #1 in 1979, has since gone on to be used more generally as an expression of solidarity in various contexts, notably as the anthem of the community outreach group Rodgers founded, We Are Family Foundation.

12 “Disco Inferno,” The Trammps, 1977

Working closely with the Philly Sound group MFSB, The Trammps were one of the early disco bands to have success on dance club and R&B charts, if not the pop charts, in the mid-’70s. In 1976, their 11-minute opus “Disco Inferno” reached #1 on the dance charts but didn’t gain much traction in the mainstream market until Robert Stigwood chose to include it on the multiplatinum soundtrack to “Saturday Night Fever.” When it was edited down to 3:45 for single release, it reached #11 in the spring of 1978.

13 “Hot Stuff,” Donna Summer, 1979

Summer was a bellwether of disco from the get-go when her first single, 1975’s “Love to Love You Baby,” peaked at #2 on pop charts. She went on to mega-success throughout the disco era with huge hits like “Last Dance,” “I Feel Love” and a cover of “MacArthur Park.” Her biggest year came in 1979 with her “Bad Girls” LP and three #1 hits, one of which, “Hot Stuff,” was praised as “a smart merger of disco and rock with a fiery vocal delivery.” The lyrics are blatantly sexual in nature — “looking for some hot stuff, gotta have some love tonight” — which made it a lightning rod in the disco clubs.

14 “Funkytown,” Lipps, Inc., 1980

Released in 1980, “Funkytown” was a relatively late entry to the disco scene, but it served to give it one last jolt of electricity. Lead vocalist Cynthia Johnson’s forceful singing featured lyrics in which the narrator yearns for a locale that will “keep me movin’, keep me groovin’ with some energy.” This dovetailed nicely with plans the plans of Lipps Inc. to relocate from Minneapolis to New York City. “Funkytown” became an international #1, while its follow-up, a disco cover version of Ace’s 1975 hit “How Long,” was huge in the clubs but failed to chart on the US Top 40.

15 “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” Michael Jackson, 1979

Upon meeting iconic producer Quincy Jones during their involvement in the film “The Wiz” in 1978, Jackson asked Jones to produce his next solo LP. Four years before “Thriller” would rewrite the record books for album sales, Jackson came up with the amazing dance songs that would comprise “Off the Wall,” most notably the leadoff single, “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” which introduced his falsetto voice and “vocal hiccup” style. Jackson’s religious mother objected to what she felt were sinful lyrics, but Jackson reassured her the words “could mean whatever people wanted it to.” It held the #1 slot on pop charts for six weeks in 1979.

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Blow those horns, ’cause it sounds like victory

Posted on by brucehhackett

If you analyze the instrumentation of most classic rock songs, you most often notice the guitars (electric and/or acoustic), the keyboards, and the bass/drums of the rhythm section. Lead and background vocals, too, play a key role — sometimes THE key role — in a song’s overall mix.

But something that always makes me sit up and take notice is when pop songs have used bright, punchy, in-your-face horns. Not just a lone saxophone, although I adore the mood a sax brings to virtually every song in which it’s heard. I’m talking about rock bands with horn sections — trumpet(s), trombone and sax — that come bursting in and take a tune to an entirely different level.

Louis Prima and His Big Band

Back in the ’30s, ’40s and early ’50s, before rock and roll became a defined genre, horn sections were heard all the time in big band, swing, blues and boogie-woogie recordings and in live performances. Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Louis Prima (“Jump, Jive ‘n Wail”) and Louis Jordan (“Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens”) and other big-band leaders of that era liberally used full horn sections to underscore the vibrant rhythms provided by the other instruments. The orchestras that accompanied crooners like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin were fond of employing brassy horns on certain uptempo tracks like “Birth of the Blues” and “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head.”

The advent of rock and roll brought the two-guitars-bass-drums lineup to the forefront of pop music, first with Elvis Presley and later popularized by The Beatles and other groups on both side of the pond, which relegated horns to the back burner (or off the stovetop entirely) for a while. But there were always exceptions like Fats Domino’s “Blueberry Hill,” Ray Charles’s “Hallelujah I Love Her So” and Sam Cooke’s “Twistin’ the Night Away.”

In the rhythm-and-blues arena, horns were often still featured in the hits coming out of Motown (Stevie Wonder’s “Uptight,” The Temptations’ “Get Ready”) as well as on the great James Brown’s iconic 1965 hits “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” and “I Got You (I Feel Good).” Horns were even more prevalent on the “Southern soul” songs that came from artists on the Atlantic and Stax labels in Memphis — Sam & Dave’s “Soul Man,” Wilson Pickett’s “Land of a Thousand Dances,” Eddie Floyd’s “Knock on Wood,” The Bar-Kays’ “Soul Finger” and plenty more.

As rock music began diversifying into sub-categories (country rock, acid rock, progressive rock), one of those genres was jazz rock, which reintroduced horns into the picture in a novel way, most notably by two groups: Blood, Sweat & Tears and Chicago. These bands made horns more central to the arrangements, providing instrumental showcases for both solo and ensemble playing influenced by the big-band tradition in jazz.

BS&T’s horn section: Fred Lipsius, Jerry Hyman, Chuck Winfield, Lew Soloff

When BS&T founder Al Kooper sought to merge jazz and rock on BS&T’s 1968 debut, “Child is Father to the Man,” he recruited seasoned jazz musicians to comprise the all-important horn section. “I Can’t Quit Her” made a modest impact, but their second release, the multiplatinum “Blood Sweat & Tears,” featured huge hits (“You’ve Made Me So Very Happy,” “Spinning Wheel”) that put horns prominently in the Top Ten of US pop charts in 1969.

Following on their heels was the seven-man group originally called Chicago Transit Authority, which sported a three-man horn section of classically trained musicians who were headed for careers in the symphony until they were bitten by the rock and roll bug. Chicago’s star took a little longer to rise, but when “Make Me Smile” went Top Ten in 1970, their record company wisely returned to their overlooked 1969 debut and re-released tracks (“Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is,” “Questions 67 and 68”) that had Chicago’s mighty horn section re-appearing on the charts every couple of months.

Chicago’s powerful horn section: James Pankow, Walter Parazaider and Lee Loughnane

Thanks to the popularity of these two horns-dominant artists, a host of one-hit copycats saw fit to piggyback on the horns craze in 1970-1971 and had isolated successes of their own. Most notable among these were “Vehicle” by The Ides of March, “Get It On” by Chase, “One Fine Morning” by Lighthouse and “I’m Doin’ Fine Now” by New York City. Each of these offered huge blasts of horns that carried or augmented the melodies and greatly enhanced their mainstream appeal.

Truth be told, though, horns DID occasionally show up in mid-’60s pop. In particular, The Buckinghams had three Top Ten hits in 1967 (“Kind of a Drag,” “Mercy Mercy Mercy,” “Don’t You Care”) all of which featured prominent horns. Other classic hit singles that made credible use of horns included “Bend Me Shape Me” by The American Breed, “She’d Rather Be With Me” by The Turtles and “More Today Than Yesterday” by The Spiral Starecase. The Beatles’ obvious R&B tribute “Got to Get You Into My Life” was awash in horns, and Sly and the Family Stone’s horns took over on hits like “Dance to the Music” and “Stand!” Even acoustic acts like Simon and Garfunkel and James Taylor broke out the horns to accentuate 1970 album cuts like “Keep the Customer Satisfied” and “Steamroller Blues.”

Tower of Power appearing on “Soul Train” TV show in the 1970s

The East Bay region of San Francisco seemed to incubate bands with horn sections, from the mighty Tower of Power (“So Very Hard to Go,” “This Time It’s Real”) and the Full-Tilt Boogie Band on Janis Joplin’s “Kozmic Blues” LP (“Try Just a Little Bit Harder”) to the largely unknown Cold Blood (“You Got Me Hummin'”) and Myrth (“Don’t Pity the Man”). Santana’s Latin groove sometimes threw in horns to spice things up (“Everybody’s Everything”), as did Joe Cocker in his “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” phase (“The Letter”) and even The Rolling Stones in their “Sticky Fingers” period (“Bitch”).

England contributed a couple horn-dominant outfits of their own — Osibisa (“Music For Gong Gong”) and If (“You In Your Small Corner”) — although they attracted only cult audiences in the US.

Earth, Wind & Fire’s horn section in 1977

By the mid-’70s, the use of horn sections became more widespread again. Billy Preston (“Will It Go Round in Circles”), Earth Wind and Fire (“Sing a Song,” “September”) and Average White Band (“Work to Do,” “Pick Up the Pieces”) enjoyed #1 singles and albums carried by exuberant horn parts, as did glaringly underrated groups like Southside Johnny and The Asbury Jukes (“The Fever,” “Talk to Me”). Some rockers like The Doobie Brothers (“Don’t Start Me to Talkin'”), Steely Dan (“My Old School”), Bruce Springsteen (“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”) and Boz Scaggs (“You Make It So Hard to Say No”) presented superb horn charts to beef up the arrangements of individual tracks.

Disco and dance music of the late ’70s tended to prefer layers of strings, but horns were all over the work of The Village People (“Y.M.C.A.”) and Rick James (“Give It To Me Baby”). When John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd turned a Saturday Night Live skit into a functioning band and a feature film with The Blues Brothers, a horn section drove their best numbers, like their collaboration with Aretha Franklin on a relentless cover of “Think.”

The New Wave movement of the ’80s didn’t exactly embrace horns, but there were superb songs throughout that decade that used trumpets and saxes to great effect. Joe Jackson did an entire tribute to big band music with his revelatory “Jumpin’ Jive” LP in 1981, followed by the 1984 horns hit, “You Can’t Get What You Want (‘Til You Know What You Want),” while Phil Collins made liberal use of the EW&F horn section on his solo work (“I Missed Again”) and a few tracks with Genesis as well. In 1986, Peter Gabriel and Billy Joel used killer horns on “Sledgehammer” and “Big Man on Mulberry Street,” respectively, while Paul Simon had fun with horns on “Late in the Evening” and “You Can Call Me Al.”

Lyle Lovett and His Large Band, 1990

The ’90s brought still more revivals of horn-dominant music. Country artist Lyle Lovett demonstrated his passion for swing, blues and jazz when he released “Lyle Lovett and His Large Band” in 1989, and offered many recordings like “That’s Right (You’re Not From Texas)” with that horns-heavy outfit. Rockabilly guitarist Brian Setzer of The Stray Cats put together a touring/recording band called The Brian Setzer Orchestra that had as many as five horn players on stage and in the studio doing swing classics as well as originals like “The Dirty Boogie.” The Cherry Poppin’ Daddies took a similar although less successful approach with “Zoot Suit Riot.”

The presence of horns in pop/rock music remains a factor in the 21st Century. The full-throated R&B of the Nashville band LUTHI utilizes horns on its slow groove and uptempo numbers (“Stranger”) alike; and I was recently turned on to the lively music of Nathaniel Rateliff and The Night Sweats, whose horn section carries some of their best tracks (“I Need Never Get Old”).

There are many dozens of other examples of excellent use of horn sections in rock music, but I’ve cited the more obvious ones as well as a few personal favorites. The robust Spotify playlist below, I hope, will be an enjoyable listen that’s designed to get you up out of your chair and moving around your kitchen, living room or dance floor!

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