Nile Rodgers’s best album was made with Sister Sledge!
Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards’s side project, Sister Sledge, released what has to be considered the best Disco album ever made in 1979.
By this point, the Sledge sisters had succumbed to a bit of a slump. After dropping their first single in ’71, followed by two albums in ’75 and ‘77, they’d only had two hits, and none of them in their native U.S.
Love Don’t Go Through No Changes On Me, released in ‘74 did reasonably well in Japan and Mama Never Told Me charted in the U.K. but being on major label Atlantic, this wasn’t going to work for much longer, enter Nile and Bernard…
Chic was on the same label as Sister Sledge and when they got the gig to write and produce their next album, they really went for it.
Singles We Are Family, He’s The Greatest Dancer, and Lost In Music all did really well. Thinking Of You was released as a single five years later and also did well.
These four songs are some of the best Disco tunes ever recorded, up there with Bee Gees, The Jacksons and of course, Chic’s own hits.
What’s so impressive about these four tunes is the longevity they’ve had. All four are still played by DJs and on the radio, they’ve been sampled multiple times and are a given on every Disco band’s setlist. Bands that play Motown and Soul, even your average party band often play at least one of these legendary compositions.
We must also remember that when We Are Family was released in early ’79, it was just before the movement Disco Demolition changed the landscape of music in July of the same year, effectively barely giving the album a chance!
After the enormous success with We Are Family, they released Love Somebody Today the following year, but the magic was clearly gone and no significant singles came from this release.
The same would be true for the remaining albums coming from Sister Sledge, nothing even came close to the incredibly high quality they managed with We Are Family.
I guess this proves that writing amazing tunes is easier said than done, even when you’re Nile Rodgers, who has confessed that the album We Are Family is probably the best album he’s ever made!
Sister Sledge Tunes | Related Pages
He’s The Greatest Dancer
You can learn how to play He’s The Greatest Dancer by Sister Sledge using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| Cm7 Dm7 | F#dim7 Gm7 |
Oh, what, wow, he’s the greatest dancer…
Lost in Music
You can learn how to play Lost in Music by Sister Sledge using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| C Dm7 | Dm7 | C G | G |
We’re lost in music, caught in a trap…
Thinking of You
You can learn how to play Thinking of You by Sister Sledge using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| Gm7 Dm7 | Eb Bbmaj7 |
Everybody let me tell you ’bout my love…
We Are Family
You can learn how to play We Are Family by Sister Sledge using chords, lyrics, chord analysis, and the original recording.
| A (A6) | G (G6) | D (Dadd9) | F/G (Fadd9/G) |
We are family, I got all my sisters with me…
Sister Sledge on the web
Artists & Bands
Behind every single tune you learn, there’s an artist or band with an entire catalogue of music, waiting to be discovered.
Find out more about these great Artists & Bands, and let their tunes guide you to success.
About me | Dan Lundholm
This was an article about Sister Sledge tunes, by Dan Lundholm. Discover more about him and learn guitar with Spytunes.
Most importantly, find out why you should learn guitar through playing tunes, not practising scales, and studying theory in isolation.
