The Best Disco Songs of the '70s

Bernard Edwards' bassline became public property within months: the Sugarhill Gang built 'Rapper's Delight' on it, and Chic ended up with writing credits on hip-hop's first hit single. What makes 'Good Times' work is how little happens — Tony Thompson's hi-hat, that bass, strings arriving late and leaving early. Spotify carries Risqué only as a 2018 remaster, so the linked master is tagged as one.

Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte built the entire backing track from a Moog modular in Munich, sequenced rather than played, and closed I Remember Yesterday with it as the album's glimpse of the future. 'I Feel Love' runs on sixteenth notes fed through a delay so the echo lands off the beat, with Summer floating somewhere above the machine. House and techno start here.

Turned away from Studio 54 on New Year's Eve 1977, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards went home and wrote a chorus whose original words were considerably ruder. 'Le Freak' became the biggest-selling single in Atlantic's history. Linked here as the original 1978 Atlantic single rather than the remastered album, so the guitar chop and the string stabs sit where they were first cut.

Fantasy Records put Step II out in 1978 with Harvey Fuqua producing and Martha Wash and Izora Rhodes — Two Tons O' Fun — stacked behind the lead. Sylvester sings 'You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)' in a falsetto that never sounds like a costume, and the album cut runs past six minutes with the synthesiser pulsing the whole way. Gospel phrasing over a machine.

Polydor buried it on the B-side of 'Substitute' until club DJs flipped the record over; Freddie Perren and Dino Fekaris wrote it, and it took the only Grammy ever awarded for Best Disco Recording. 'I Will Survive' opens on four bars of solo piano and a key change before any strings arrive, which is why it plays as theatre rather than groove.

Earl Young, the Trammps' drummer, is widely credited with inventing the open-hi-hat pattern every disco record leans on, and he plays it here for nearly eleven minutes. Written by Leroy Green and Ron Kersey for Atlantic in 1976, 'Disco Inferno' only sold once Saturday Night Fever picked it up. Jimmy Ellis shouts 'burn baby burn' like a man enjoying the fire.

Rodgers and Edwards wrote and produced the whole album for four sisters from Philadelphia, and the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates adopted 'We Are Family' on their way to a World Series. Kathy Sledge sings lead at nineteen, consistently ahead of the beat, while the bass declines to repeat a bar exactly. Spotify offers no un-remastered edition — only the 1995 remaster.

Gamble and Huff wrote it as a theme for Soul Train and MFSB, the forty-strong Sigma Sound house band, cut it. 'T.S.O.P. (The Sound of Philadelphia)' reached No. 1 on the Hot 100 in 1974, the first television theme to do so. The Three Degrees sing about ten words; strings and rhythm guitar handle everything else. Spotify's master sits on the 1973 parent album.

Neil Bogart wanted something long enough to fill a party, so Munich sent back a version running sixteen minutes and fifty seconds and Casablanca pressed it as a whole LP side. 'Love to Love You Baby' is two chords, a hi-hat and a woman breathing, and its flat refusal to develop is the entire idea. Moroder and Bellotte again, in no hurry whatsoever.

Cut at Criteria in Miami for Children of the World, with Stephen Stills dropping by to play percussion, and No. 1 on the Hot 100 that September. 'You Should Be Dancing' is carried by horn punches and a long conga break that shoves the drum kit aside entirely. Their Saturday Night Fever material survives on a various-artists soundtrack; this one is a Bee Gees record.

Cheryl Lynn won her Columbia contract by singing on The Gong Show, and David Paich and David Foster helped write what came of it. 'Got to Be Real' announces itself with one horn stab and then hands the record to a bassline busy enough to count as a lead part. Linked as the album cut; the same reissue also carries a shorter single version.

Walter Gibbons's remix of 'Ten Percent' was the first commercially available 12-inch single, out on Salsoul in May 1976 — so the 12-inch is the definitive recording here and the seven-inch is a footnote. Gibbons strips the Baker-Harris-Young rhythm track back to congas and hi-hat, then reassembles it in pieces. The edit, rather than the song, is the invention.

Filler, cut fast to finish the Disco Baby album for Avco, and it went to No. 1 on the Hot 100 in July 1975 before taking a Grammy for best pop instrumental. 'The Hustle' is a flute hook, a string sweep and a rhythm section politely counting you into a dance step. Spotify's copy is a Unidisc reissue that appends seven bonus cuts, three of them later Hustle remixes.

Cerrone is a drummer first, which you can hear: he plays the kit himself, and 'Supernature' rides his flat four while a sequenced synth bass crawls around beneath it. Lene Lovich wrote the lyric, uncredited, about laboratory animals turning on their makers. No. 1 on the US dance chart in early 1978. Spotify titles the parent album 3 - Supernature.

Written for Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes in 1975 by Gamble, Huff and Cary Gilbert, then remade at Motown a year later, where it won the 1978 Grammy for female R&B vocal. 'Don't Leave Me This Way' spends ninety seconds as a ballad before the tempo doubles and Houston starts shouting. Border case: Motown soul in a dancefloor arrangement.

Gene McFadden and John Whitehead spent years as Philadelphia International staff writers — 'Back Stabbers' is partly theirs — before the label let them cut a record of their own, which topped the R&B chart in 1979. 'Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now' holds the vocal back for the best part of a minute while bass and hi-hat lay the thing out. Philly's last great dancefloor single.

Norman Harris signed her to Gold Mind, the Salsoul subsidiary he ran, and produced the album this comes from. Loleatta Holloway attacks 'Hit and Run' the way a gospel singer would — too loud for the arrangement, ahead of the strings, treating every line as an argument she intends to win. The reissue parks a 12-inch mix at the end; the album version is linked.

Rochelle Fleming leads the Philadelphia trio through a minor-key vamp that sounds nothing like a hit, and 'Let No Man Put Asunder' wasn't one — it became a club standard six years on, via Frankie Knuckles's 1983 remix. A remix is a different recording, so the link is the 1977 Delusions album cut on Gold Mind, which Spotify files as Delusions (Bonus Version). First Choice at their strangest and best.