Forever In Vogue (3)

It was the sign of a definite move towards production. After an album for ex-vocalist Norma Jean, which featured the songs Sorcerer and Saturday, recently reworked by East 57th St, the pair were offered a choice of acts by Atlantic to work with. Of these Nile and 'Nard chose the least successful, a group of four young sisters whom the label had high hopes for but had only had a minor hit in '75. The group was, of course, Sister Sledge, and their success was about to change drastically with the album We Are Family (1979). With hindsight the album can be seen as a showcase for the pairs talents, not only spawning 3 major hits in He's The Greatest Dancer, Lost In Music and the title track, but maintaining a high level of songwriting and production throughout. At a time when many disco albums would have been completed with 'fillers', if anything some of the arrangements on songs like Easier to Love are more inventive than those released as singles. The pair had proved that their production could be a sellable asset and produced for various artists including Diana Ross' Diana album (1980), including Upside Down, I'm Coming Out and My Old Piano, and Sheilia and B. Devotion's Spacer. (Their choice of a major drag queen icon to record a song about 'coming out' is another example of their sense of fun.) Debra, Joan, Kim and Kathie Sledge, on the other hand, achieved a level of success that proved impossible to repeat. Without retuning to this album.

Meanwhile, Nile's and 'Nard's third album under the Chic monicker, Risque (1979), proved to be their smoothest yet. Introduced by Good Times, with possibly the funkiest bassline of the disco era, it moves through the softly Brazilian inspired Warm Summer Night to the sparking arrangements of My Feet Keep Dancing and My Forbidden Lover. Good Times was utilised by The Sugarhill Gang for the immensely successful Rappers Delight, the first major rap record. Notoriously, The Sugarhill Gang had not cleared the use of the song, and in the end all the proceeds went to Nile and 'Nard. (The sort of thing that has become more common since, particularly with the advent of sampling in the eighties. Case in point, the Marlena Shaw sampling Remember Me by The Blue Boy.) It also 'heavily influenced' Queen's Another One Bites the Dust, and has been sampled throughout the eighties to the present day, though with due credit given. This was their most accompished album to date, but it was to mark an end to Chic's constant run of chart success. One of the theories you'll hear is that their sound became outdated, but while that's true of many of Nile's and 'Nard's contemporaries, it's not of them. Their production was still clocking up major hits for other artists.

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