I generally track these albums down on YouTube (often the artists have an official channel, which I prefer to use than give somebody else the views), although I used to use Spotify. This is the first album that I couldn’t find in an extant form, but I was able to assemble it from individual videos.
This album is fundamentally the Sledge sisters (Kathy, Debbie, Joni, and Kim) performing the songs of Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, and to be honest as a disco-era record it’s more effective than the purely Chic output (even though the rest of the musicians are, basically, the same as Chic). This is in part due to the vocals of the sisters, in part that Rodgers and Edwards came up with some really good hooks.
Take the funky guitar riff for Thinking Of You, for example – that's an iconic piece that’s instantly recognisable. Or the bassline for He’s The Greatest Dancer (nicked by Will Smith). The tracks are long enough to get a good groove going (especially the full 8 minutes of We Are Family where Kathy Sledge gets her soul singer mojo going strong enough to rival even Queen Aretha in my opinion), but rarely overstay their welcome. As dance music, they’re good for that, sometimes you really do want to get Lost In Music (see what I did there?)
It’s one of those albums that’s practically a Greatest Hits, but even away from the famous tracks it’s remains strong. Sometimes the lesser known tracks, the quiet siblings, the Anne Brontes of music, are simply a retread of the famous tracks with slight changes that don’t work as well. Each of the tracks on here, though, stand on their own.
Now that we’re forty-five years out from “Disco Sucks”, it’s a lot easier to appreciate the tracks on here for what they are, rather than have to pretend to be all cool about it. I’d rather have some of the tracks on here than yet more endless iterations of post-punk in some cases. Variety is good, y’all.
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