100 Greatest Songs of the 70’s #31 Earth, Wind & Fire – Boogie Wonderland

Released: 1979

Six weeks after Boogie Wonderland’s release Steve Dahl held his knuckle dragger’s ball in Chicago; perhaps the outcome of the Disco Sucks movement had an inevitable conclusion, but if Earth Wind & Fire were sound tracking any kind of wake, nobody on the dancefloor seemed to care much.

EWF were more than just opportunists on a jam of course. By this point Maurice Chapman’s troupe – this time paired with The Emotions – has also just released their ninth album I Am after an unrivaled decade commercially that they’d spent building a catalogue fusing jazz, soul, funk and occasionally, rock too.

In a sense Boogie Wonderland was one of their less radical departures, a seamless amalgam despite as usual being the work of an ensemble cast of musicians which numbered in the dozens. It wasn’t designed as a riposte to fans of Journey and George Thorogood, but it sure helped to prove that the disco suckers were just that.