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RockerZ Slammin’ Seventies

Fifty-eight records from a single calendar year — 1979 — which is arguably the most loaded twelve months in the history of American dance music.


1979

1978

1977

1976

1975

1974

1973

1972

1970 /1971

1979: the year everything happened at once

This is not a decade playlist. It is one year, and that focus is what makes it remarkable: 1979 was the point at which disco reached its commercial peak, rock radio turned on it, hip-hop made its first appearance on record, and the sound that would become eighties R&B was already audible in the corners.

All four of those things are on this list, sitting next to each other, and none of the people involved knew which way it was about to go.

What to listen for

The Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight" is the historical pivot — the first rap record to reach a mass audience, built over Chic's "Good Times", which is also here. Play them back to back and you can hear one genre being born out of another in real time.

The CHIC run is the spine: "Good Times" and "I Want Your Love", plus Sister Sledge's "He's the Greatest Dancer", all written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards in a single extraordinary stretch.

Michael Jackson appears four times — "Rock with You", "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough", "Off the Wall" and "I Can't Help It" — which is simply what Off the Wall did to that year.

McFadden & Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" is Philadelphia's last great statement, and "Bustin' Loose" by Chuck Brown is go-go arriving from Washington with its own rhythm entirely.

The Whispers' "And the Beat Goes On" and Shalamar's "The Second Time Around" are the SOLAR Records future: harder, more synthetic, pointing at 1981 rather than back at 1975.

The soft-rock inclusions are not an accident. "What a Fool Believes", "This Is It", "Escape" and "Sad Eyes" were all over Black radio that year, and any honest account of 1979 has to include them.

Go deeper

Bobby Caldwell's "What You Won't Do For Love" is the record that most thoroughly confused radio programmers about who was singing, and it has been sampled relentlessly since.

If you want the argument in one sitting: listen to "Boogie Wonderland", then "Rapper's Delight", then "And the Beat Goes On". Past, pivot and future, in that order.

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