Chic: Chic (2018 remaster) [ATLANTIC]

Why you'll love it

This pressing carries the 2018 remaster of Chic's debut. "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" went to No. 6 in both the US and UK, and the album went gold.

This edition

• Remastered
• 180g vinyl
• Booklet included

About the album

Before they were writing hits for Diana Ross and Sister Sledge, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards had to convince the world they were a band. Their opening move was this: seven tracks of crisp, elegant disco, produced by the pair themselves, with Tony Thompson's drums cracking like a starter pistol.

"Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" is the calling card, all strings, chant and Edwards's elastic bass, and "Everybody Dance" topped the US club play chart with Norma Jean Wright out front. Rodgers's choppy guitar is already fully formed on "São Paulo" and "Strike Up The Band," and a young Luther Vandross is among the backing singers, which is a fairly good sign of who was hanging round the studio.

The album reached No. 12 on the R&B chart and set up everything Chic did next, from "Le Freak" to "Good Times." Nearly fifty years on, Rodgers's guitar still turns up on half the records in the shop, and we've given up trying to count.

Also at Kops: more Chic on vinyl · browse 70s Soul On Up

Tracklist

Listen

On Atlantic / Rhino, a reissue of the 1977 album.