Disco may have been the hottest sound of the late seventies, but in the summer of 1979, it was facing a powerful backlash. In the midst of this tension, one of the genre’s most innovative groups, CHIC, released “Good Times” – an exuberantly joyful song which would prove that dance music could be creative, complex, brilliantly produced, and incredibly funky. While the song may not have been able to save disco, it undeniably shaped the future of popular music for the next decade and beyond. Creative artists continually looked to CHIC’s track for inspiration, influencing the development of New Wave, and Hip Hop, and leading it to become one of the most sampled, inspiring, and important tracks in popular music history.
CHIC founders Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards first met as teenagers in 1970. Both had come from the world of jazz but from very early on, they were interested in bringing diverse and eclectic sounds together. Rodgers explained: “My training is all classical and very heavy jazz. My teacher learned with Wes Montgomery. In jazz, you can play whole solos all in chords with pretty harmonic movement, just as a piano player would. You get that from McCoy Tyner, you hear that there. I learned a complete harmonic style.”
In 1972, they formed a jazz-rock fusion group called the Big Apple Band. They quickly became a dance music focused group, bringing in drummer Tony Thompson, as well as vocalists Norma Jean Wright and Alfa Anderson. By 1977 they were in the studio, under the new name of CHIC, recording their demo single “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)” which was engineered by a young Bob Clearmountain.
Their self-titled debut album was released under Atlantic records in 1977. In late 1978, they released their second album C’est Chic which contained the hit single “Le Freak” – While their previous two singles had hit number one on the US Dance Club Songs chart, “Le Freak” was CHIC’s first number one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, in addition to being a huge international hit for the band. While Le Freak is certainly one of the band’s most important tracks, it is not the only one. In 1979, they released their second number one hit – a song which would inspire the entire popular music landscape of the eighties…“Good Times”
From the moment it begins, “Good Times” captures audiences with its infectious groove combined with a joyous vocal refrain. Rodgers has credited Kool and the Gang’s “Hollywood Swinging” as the inspiration for the song. While the songs are certainly different, they share a characteristic exuberance, as well as a bassline centered around a three-pulse motive.
“Good Times” opens with a shimmering keyboard glissando, recorded in an unorthodox setting. Rodgers explained: It’s a gigantic glissando starting at the lower portion of the keyboard and going as far as you can in that couple of seconds. And then we have the women’s bathroom at the Power Station, our famous studio that we recorded in, as the big echo chamber. We fed the signal into the ladies bathroom. It was very reflective in there. It’s all tiles and stuff like that, so it makes this swirly sound that’s bouncing back and forth. So it’s a cool thing. It’s a subtle technique that winds up becoming this grand, big statement. That grand statement, performed by Raymond Jones on a Fender Rhodes keyboard, provides the joyous opening for the song’s optimistic and upbeat lyrics.
“Good Times” is centered around a classic, dance party refrain sung by Fonzi Thornton, Alf Anderson and Michelle Cobbs:
Good times
These are the good times
Leave your cares behind
The upward melody of the vocal refrain singing “Good Times” heightens the song’s exuberant tone. The verse lyrics break down the context of the joy a little more, indicating that these good times are much-needed relief after times of struggle. The band even includes lyrics referencing depression era songs like Milton Agers’ “Happy Days are Here Again.” Rodgers explained that CHIC songs tend to have hidden meanings like this, and with Good Times, they were trying to envision a better world: “When Chic started we were in the midst of the greatest financial recessions. We had gas rationing lines in America. And people said to us, ‘How the hell could you write such happy songs when the world is so miserable?’ But you have to write about the world that you want to see. The path I’m trying to carve out for Chic is, ‘Always remember the fun,’” he says. “Sometimes an artist’s greatest responsibility is not to reflect the world as it is, but to dream about the world you want to have.”
Certainly the song’s iconic groove also equally contributes to the joyous experience of listening to “Good Times.” Breaking it down, we find Tony Thompson’s drums in tight alignment with the song’s funky pulse. Nile Rodgers’ guitar part contiubutes as much to the rhythm of the song as the drums or the bass. In 1991, Edwards told Bass Player magazine: “The two of us I consider a rhythm section, even without drums, because we keep so much rhythm going on”
And then, of course, there’s Edwards‘ foundational bassline. In 2005, Rodgers explained that the bassline came from an instantaneous response to long-standing desire to create a song with a walking bassline. The story goes that Bernard stumbled into the studio late, after a night out on the town with Queen bassist John Deacon.
With Clearmountain at the board, Rodgers, Thompson and one of the keyboard players were already going through the track, when Edwards joined in on bass. Bernard explained…“I started screaming over the drums: ‘Walk!’ …..‘What?’ I shouted, ‘Walk,walk!’”…So then Bernard, well, he started to walk.” But this was no regular walking bass line, Bernards broke into a funky, yet singable bass melody which would inspire generations of musicians to follow.
Fonzo Thornton (who provided many of the male vocal parts for CHIC records during this period) recalled being completely in awe of Bernards’ groove: “Nile told me he had a new record he wanted me to sing on… When I heard Bernard’s bassline — it was almost scary, because it was so new. I said, ‘This is something special.’”
While CHIC also credit Kool and the Gang for inspiration, Bernard certainly made that three-pulse beginning their own, and its CHIC’s recording that inspired their immediate contemporaries like Queen in “Another One Bites the Dust,” Blondie’s “Rapture,” as well as the nascent hip-hop scene. When Sugar Hill Records’ “Rapper’s Delight” came out with an almost identical bassline (there’s about an eighth note difference from CHIC’s original) and a scratched sample of their string section recording, Rodgers and Edwards were awarded co-writing credit on their track.
“Good Times” was recorded at the Power Station Studios in Manhattan – a new studio which had just opened its doors a year earlier in 1977. “Good Times” and their entire third album Risqué was produced by Bernard and Edwards with a young Bob Clearmountain as the engineer. It was mastered at Atlantic Studios in New York.
The single “Good Times” was released on June 4, 1979 – almost two months before the release of their third album. It hit the number one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 on August 18, 1979 and was the best selling single of Atlantic’s history up until that point. But more than being a commercially successive, massive hit, ”Good Times” revolutionized the way people listened to music in 1979.
Despite its immense popularity, disco was experiencing a massive pushback by rock fans, whose rallying cry of “disco sucks” dominated the summer. Disco Demolition Night on July 12, 1979, at a White Socks game provides a powerful example of this sentiment, starting out as a gimmicky attempt to boost attendance by offering audiences a chance to burn disco records during the break between a double-header baseball game. The event resulted in a massive riot, when tens of thousands of rock fans showed up – many without tickets – to celebrate their distaste for disco music. In the midst of this tension, Chic pushed forward capturing the attention of some of rock and popular music’s biggest artists.
In the height of the backlash against Disco, they proved that dance music could be innovative, exciting, funk….and lots of fun. After its release, major rock artists like Queen, David Bowie, and the newly emerging punk-inspired New Wave artists like Blondie, were inspired to bring dance-centered grooves into their own songs. The song remains one of the most sampled songs in music history and an inspiration for the generations of musicians who followed.
Written by Caitlin Vaughn Carlos
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Watch the video below to learn more about Chic’s ‘Good Times’!
