There are few moments better than the one where confusion
and doubt are conquered, even eliminated.
We are in disco when this particular and precise emotion happens
to make sense, as disco is about that joy, a joy that magnetic and crushing and
inexplicable, an energy that cannot be denied.
That it comes in with Max Roach-inspired drumming, swirling strings and
an I’ve-lived-this-and-we-can-share-it vocal from Gloria Gaynor (who sounds as
caught up in the song as anyone) is just as well. We are far from the laid-back pleasures of "Rock Your Baby" or the get-down Miami horn blasts of KC & the Sunshine Band here. Gaynor is singing to be heard, and that this is a Jackson 5 song seems to make no impression on her whatsoever. She is making this her own.
What those who bought this en masse may or may have not
known was that “Never Can Say Goodbye” was the middle of a trilogy from her album of the time – a “mix”
really – by Tom Moulton*, which starts with “Honey Bee” and ends with “Reach Out
I’ll Be There.**” This mix was the first to appear on an album – let’s just
pause to ponder this – and capitalized on Moulton’s ability as a mixer to
really get into the songs – not in a
complicated way, just in a way that was supposed to elongate the song, and have
Gaynor’s voice in your head *even when she wasn’t audibly there*. Dancing in
your head? That the very male world of disco (I have been reading Peter Shapiro’s
book on it and early discos were definitely male territory, with disco
becoming a more female-friendly phenomenon later on) should have a woman taking
on Levi Stubbs’ aria of a song and making it sound like the veritable audio
version of the last helicopter out of Vietnam is, to say the least, quite
something.
The power of the song is to worry away in the verses and then dismiss these worries in the chorus with a rising "I love you ssssooooooooooo" that has in it right there a real vulnerability/strength moment which disco (when it wasn't just exhorting you the listener to dance, which it often did) does so well. Can you stop? Is stopping on the dancefloor possible? Tom Moulton didn't want you to stop, and put this together with oh say Eddie Kendricks' "Girl You Need A Change Of Mind" and it won't stop.
Next: A radio, a woman, a man.
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