Everybody dance: Nile Rodgers' 20 greatest tracks – ranked!

The Guardian

13-03-2025

It was criminal that Mathis's label cancelled the release of his Chic-produced album, I Love My Lady. Finally brought out in 2017, it sounded marvellous: Rodgers had leaned on his love of jazz, lending the funk a slightly Steely Dan-ish edge. Fall in Love is fabulous: Mathis's gossamer vocals floating above a hypnotic, mid-tempo groove.
Taking inspiration from the 1930s was a disco trope – check Dr Buzzard's Original Savannah Band's swing-infused debut album or Carrie Lucas's fabulous Tic Toc – but Dance Dance Dance's re-appropriation of bandleader Ben Bernie's catchphrase 'yowsa yowsa yowsa!' was the most successful example of the lot: that it was aligned to a killer groove helped.
The eponymous solo album by Chic's former vocalist is the great overlooked Rodgers and Edwards production of their golden era. Saturday perfectly evokes the anticipation before a night out, but doesn't skirt the drudgery a night out provides escape from. Currently the theme to Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway, which rather misses the point.
Good tracks are scattered across Chic's unloved 80s albums, but Soup for One is their last unequivocal classic: spacier and synth-ier than their 70s output, there's a hint of the electronic boogie sound prominent in contemporary New York clubs. Its riff will be immediately familiar to latterday listeners thanks to the sample on Modjo's 2000 chart-topper Lady.
The album that turned Madonna into a superstar was evidence of both Rodgers' hitmaking nous and his adaptability as a producer. Its modish synth-heavy sound bore no resemblance to Chic … almost. Listen closely to the title track and you can hear his trademark staccato guitar driving the whole thing along.
Chic's ballads got less attention than their dancefloor-focused tracks, but At Last I Am Free deserves real shine. It's an account of being teargassed at a Black Panther rally and the ensuing sense of disillusion, but it's disguised as a sumptuous, crestfallen love song. Robert Wyatt's cover dug into the song's dejected mood.
Arguably the most famous Chic track of all – a song that has been played at everything from feminist rallies to sports victories and that's clearly going to provoke party singalongs for the rest of time – was actually intended to reintroduce Sister Sledge to record buyers after a series of flops. Incredibly, their record label initially rejected it.
After encountering drag queens dressed as Diana Ross, Rodgers and Edwards aimed to write her a gay anthem with the same power as Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud (Ross thought the lyrics referred to her breaking free of Motown's strictures). A joy from start to finish, it became a huge hit and ultimately, achieved its initial aim.
The faint hint that disco was perhaps getting a little too popular for its own good lurks on He's the Greatest Dancer's hymn to a designer-clad Adonis: the dancefloor is packed with 'out-of-towners touring'. The problem being that another Chic-penned song as great as this was only going to make disco bigger.
Rodgers' 21st-century output has been of deeply variable quality, but Get Lucky was a global smash for a reason. A fantastic song built around Rodgers' unmistakeable guitar, its take on disco is neither knowingly retro nor noticeably modern; even before it became completely inescapable it somehow sounded weirdly familiar, as if it always existed.
A new direction for the Chic Organization's sound: Rodgers' guitar plays a reggae off-beat, the rhythm track is influenced by electro, Simon's voice is cushioned by swathes of synth. The results are magic, the 12in mix a club perennial. Lumbered with an absolutely mortifying video, it flopped in the US, but was a huge European hit.
The Rodgers-produced Let's Dance album may have been the moment when Bowie's artistic quality control finally slackened in the quest for commercial acceptance, but the title track is magnificent: a brand of pop more strange and tense than its global smash status and its ubiquity following Bowie's death might suggest.
As a point of contrast, it's worth playing Sheila and B Devotion's first British hit, a disco version of Singin' in the Rain: it's gormless tripe. Enter the Chic Organization, and Shelia and B Devotion are utterly transformed. From its wistful piano intro to its rock-y guitar solo, Spacer is sleek, sexy and surprisingly sparse perfection.
Chic at their vertiginous zenith, when Rodgers and Edwards seemed incapable of making anything that didn't sound simultaneously flawless and effortless: the simplicity of the four-note hook balanced out by the complexity of the slow-building horn and string arrangement, which achieves euphoric take off at 3min 25sec.
More so than their debut single, Everybody Dance defined Chic's sound, their ethos of music as a form of luxury goods: sophisticated, spare but somehow sumptuous, driven by incredible musicianship (listen to Edwards's bass), lyrics that hymn the dancefloor as the cure for whatever might be ailing you.
A song that sounds like falling in love feels: check out the breakdown at 2min 53sec, when the strings relax into a gorgeous shimmer, Edwards hits a single bass note and Kathy Sledge sighs: 'I'm in love again' – the most beautiful moment in the Chic Organization's entire catalogue.
Rejection made creatively profitable. Originally a complaint about Rodgers and Edwards being refused entry to Studio 54, titled Fuck Off (there's still a snarky quality to the finished song's suggestion you 'come on down to the 54'), Le Freak's irresistible call to the dancefloor sold 7m copies, proof that living well is the best revenge.
In a sense, Chic's Diana Ross collaboration was a disaster: Ross hated the results and had the album remixed; the whole business ended up in court. But musically, it was magic, and nowhere more so than on Upside Down, potent enough to buck America's disco backlash and reach No 1.
Rodgers said We Are Family was 'hands down' the Chic Organization's greatest album, and Lost in Music – presumably inspired by Sister Sledge's scuffling years prior to the album's release – is its crowning glory: a song and production so perfect it never loses its power to transport you to a better place.
Even in a catalogue as rich as Chic's, Good Times stands out. For one thing, it's got a hook of simplistic perfection and the greatest bass line Edwards ever came up with (one of the great bass lines full stop, sampled umpteen times since it was first borrowed by hip-hop pioneers the Sugarhill Gang). For another, it's infinitely smarter than your average dependable party anthem, packed with lyrical references that equate America's then-current economic situation to the Great Depression ('Happy days are here again,' it opens, mordantly). If you need proof that Chic were a cut above their disco peers, here it is.