THE ANATOMY OF AN ICONIC ALBUM
For her ’80 release, Diana Ross got a chic reinvention
Every great pop star understands the need to evolve to remain relevant, and by 1979, Diana Ross knew she was due another reinvention.
Though still only in her mid30s, the Detroit-born singer already had 15 years of hits under her belt — first as lead singer in The Supremes, then as a solo star who’d recorded everything from Marvin Gaye duets to Billie Holiday covers. But it had been three years since her last top 10 single, the disco classic Love Hangover, so Ross stepped away from her regular collaborators Brian and Eddie Holland and went in search of someone who could take her music in a new direction.
Having seen for herself how Chic’s funky hits, such as Le Freak, would fill the dance floor at the New York nightclub Studio 54, Ross recruited the band’s creative duo, Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, to write and produce her next record. The result, Diana, released 40 years ago this spring, would become the most highly regarded and biggest-selling album of her career.
It sold more than 10 million copies and spawned two era-defining singles, Upside Down and I’m Coming Out, tracks that have been sampled since by artists including Salt-n-pepa and The Notorious B.I.G.
But while the album’s sinewy disco grooves and ebullient vocals still sound effortless today, the recording process was anything but. Rodgers identifies Diana as “the most difficult record I’ve ever made in my life.
“Bernard and I talked endlessly with (Ross and) went to her apartment to see who this woman was,” Rodgers says in the liner notes for the album’s 2003 deluxe edition. “Once we met her and became friends, she started to reveal things about herself that no one knew. No one understood that she was driven, complex and intellectual.” Rodgers and Edwards then used Ross’s own words as the foundation stones for the songs on the album: Upside Down was inspired by her stated desire to “turn her career upside down,” while Have Fun (Again) reflected her intention to do just that.
And then there’s the second single, I’m Coming Out, which Rodgers and Edwards wrote after a visit to a New York drag club. “I went to the bathroom and I happened to notice on either side there were a bunch of Diana Ross impersonators,” Rodgers told Billboard magazine in 2011. “I ran outside and called Bernard and told him about it and said: ‘What if we recognize Diana Ross’s really cool alignment with her fan base in the gay community?’”
Rodgers and Edwards ostensibly wrote I’m Coming Out to capture Ross’s sense of creative emergence “from under the thumb of the label,” Motown, which was still headed up by her former flame Berry Gordy. But its subtext is difficult to miss — and made it a surefire gay anthem.
When Ross took an early rough mix of the track to Frankie Crocker, a highly influential New York DJ, he told her he “hated” it. Rodgers recalls Ross coming back to the studio and asking him: “Why are you trying to ruin my career?” She also asked if they’d deliberately tricked her into making “a gay record” and whether fans might misinterpret it as a declaration of her own sexuality.
“It’s the only time I’ve ever lied to an artist,” Rodgers has said. “I looked her straight in the eye and said: ‘Are you kidding?’”
At the root of Ross’s discomfort with I’m Coming Out was the growing popularity of the socalled “Disco Sucks” movement, a backlash against the musical genre catalyzed by a disgruntled Chicago radio DJ, Steve Dahl. Disco Sucks wasn’t just about disco supplanting rock music on the radio; it was a way for some white males to express their disapproval of a genre originally rooted in black and gay culture.
“When that happened, it was because they hated gay people, they hated black people and women,” Rodgers would recall decades later. Early in her career, Ross had gone through Motown’s famous finishing school, taking etiquette and deportment lessons as part of the label’s plan to make The Supremes palatable to conservative white audiences. She wasn’t about to squander her hard work by aligning herself with a genre that was now becoming toxic. Ross and Motown initially rejected the album.
Though Rodgers and Edwards won this first battle with Ross and Motown, they would lose the next. Still unhappy with how the tracks sounded, Ross asked Motown engineer Russ Terrana to remix the entire album.
Diana was still a disco album, but it now had a punchier sound that would anticipate the harder-edged dance-pop of the following decade. Forty years on, it’s still thrilling to listen to it. Still, Rodgers says he was “devastated” and “in tears” when he first heard the new mix — he and Edwards even considered having their names removed from the credits. He’s now relieved they backed down and kept their names on it: “Thank God cooler heads prevailed and said: ‘There’s something great here but it has to be made more accessible.’”
In retrospect, Rodgers also credits Ross with transforming his career, paving the way for future collaborations with David Bowie and Madonna.
“So, maybe the record should have been that difficult,” he conceded in 2013. “Maybe I had to fight because it was so different — maybe I had to prove to them I was willing to go to court and lose everything because it was so new.”
Once we met her and became friends, she started to reveal things about herself that no one knew. No one understood that she was driven, complex and intellectual.