“Upside Down” doesn’t have a whole lot of words, but it’s still lyrically richer and more complex than Chic’s two chart-toppers. Ross’ performance on “Upside Down” isn’t even showy, but I can’t say enough nice things about it. As the song is ending, she falls into lockstep with Chic’s two singers, and she’s got the same chemistry with them as she once had with the Supremes. She dips in and out of the groove with an effortless grace, riding the beat effortlessly. The hesitation in her delivery on the chorus, the way she waits just a second to deliver every syllable of the title - it’s incredible. On “Upside Down,” her timing is impeccable. Ross understood how a beat could work even in the early Supremes days, she’d been projecting poise and sophistication all over big dance beats. I could listen to that instrumental track on a loop for hours.īut Ross deserves plenty of credit herself. Instead, the beat sounds like it’s dancing with itself. Even the titanic handclaps never overpower anything. The groove isn’t quite disco it’s too elastic for that. The strings become a part of the rhythm section. The Fender Rhodes notes hit like champagne. The bass sounds like a piano, and the piano sounds like a bass. On “Upside Down,” the band goes into some uncanny telepathic trance, everything working within everything else. “ Le Freak” and “ Good Times,” Chic’s two #1 hits, are more vamps than songs, and both of them were transcendent. The groove on “Upside Down” is just ridiculous. It might be her best song, with or without the Supremes. “Upside Down,” the album’s opening track, became Ross’ biggest-ever solo single.
It also revitalized Ross’ career in a huge way. It sold something like 10 million copies worldwide, launched a couple of top-10 hits, and helped forge the ’80s dance-pop blueprints that future stars like Madonna and Janet Jackson would adapt. Diana became the biggest album of Ross’ career. This pissed off Rodgers and Edwards to the point where they almost had their names taken off of the project.īut it worked. When Ross heard the final mix of the album, she went into the lab with Motown producer Russ Terrana and remixed the whole thing, pushing her vocals further to the front.
It was almost as if Diana Ross had become a member of Chic. Chic vocalists Alfa Anderson and Luci Martin sang backup. The other musicians in Chic - drummer Tony Thompson, keyboardists Raymond Jones and Andy Schwartz - also played on the record. Rodgers and Edwards played guitar and bass on it. Chic masterminds Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards wrote and produced every song on the album, and they recorded it in their New York studio. On Ross’ 1980 album Diana, Chic were basically her backing band. (This is when she was dating Gene Simmons, which is gross to think about.) But the hits weren’t coming.
She’d been playing big clubs and casinos, and she’d made an HBO special out of a Caesar’s Palace show in 1979.
#Bulb boy upside down tv#
After The Wiz, she’d never act in a theatrically released film again, though she starred in a couple of TV movies in the ’90s. As an actress, she’d made two straight flops with 1975’s Mahogany and the 1978 musical The Wiz. In fact, none of Ross’ singles in those four years had even touched the top 10. Ross had hit #1 with the disco banger “ Love Hangover” in 1976, but she’d then gone four years - up until then, the longest stretch of her career - without a #1 hit. In 1980, as disco was disappearing from the pop charts, Diana Ross recruited the biggest and best group of the late disco era to become her backing band. In The Number Ones, I’m reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart’s beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present.
0 kommentar(er)
