Sister Sledge

Recently, seven of the Top Ten singles in America were disco-related. Having made it as
the Next Big Thing, disco now faces the challenge of sustaining its popularity against the
relentless monotony of its four-beat. Not since the late Fifties, when the music business
jumped on the rock & roll bandwagon, has so much junk been shoved onto the marketplace
so hastily. With the obvious exceptions of Blondie's "Heart of Glass" and Rod Ste... More >

The disco disc features identical versions (at 8:06 and 6:04) of the two side-openers--the title track, a magnificent, soul-shouting sisterhood anthem that could set straight cheerleaders and militant lesbians dancing side by side, and "He's the Greatest Dancer," a seductive tribute to a fellow who gets to doff his designer clothes in the presence of countless panting women. (I wonder if I would have been so amused by the boy from New York City in 1965 if I'd known that in 1979 he'd be taken seriously.) All that's missing from the album is "Lost in Music," that one-in-a-hundred I-love-you-know-what song that illuminates its subject. Plus a couple of useless slow ones and some chic riffs. So the d.d. would be your buy--if you could buy it. (Grade: B+)