100 Greatest Songs of the 70’s #15 Chic – Good Times

Released: 1979

There had been a particularly troglodyte response to disco’s rise throughout the seventies, it’s many haters judging it to be disposable and rejecting the sometimes explicit portrayals of the sexuality it celebrated. But one aspect which was rarely if at all put under scrutiny were the socio-political undertones of Good Times, Chic’s apparent paean to Studio 54 branded hedonism. A song which would become one of the most influential of all time – specifically on hip-hop but also more surprisingly on the post-punk milieu – it’s writers Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers were interested in much more than fluffing the egos of snobby Manhattanites.

It’s simply impossible to do the pair’s fascinating back stories justice in just a few hundred words, so we begin with them in the Big Apple Band and with that’s breaking up in 1976. The duo would then go on to change their name to Allah and The Knife Wielding Maniacs, before settling on Chic and having watched them during a brief trip to London, taking inspiration from Roxy Music (Rodgers also admitted to idolising Kiss).

Chic would become a byword for high time sophistication and Rodgers and Edwards would also produce Sister Sledge to glory. But things were not quite what they seemed; ‘I had been a serious political activist in the Black Panthers’ the former told Mojo in 2001. ‘When I was writing Chic music, it was always very political’.

They enjoyed themselves too. Le Freak had it’s origins in being thrown out of Studio 54 after being invited there by Grace Jones, but it was Good Times that cemented their place in history. Sonically perfect, elegantly minimalist and years ahead of it’s time, the track’s cloaked essence was in resilience in the face of the desperate economic straits of the era, societal trauma Rodgers felt was analogus to the Great Depression of the 1930’s. Into this supposedly glamourous call to arms he mischievously sprinkled references to contemporary standards such as Milton Ager’s Happy Days Are Here Again and About A Quarter to Nine by Al Jolson, inverting the glitterball movement’s reputation for shallowness. As far as Chic were concerned you brought your head – as well as your ass – out with you on any given Saturday night.