Grace Jones’ 20 greatest songs – ranked!
20. I Need a Man (1975)
Jones’s debut single was joyous, cantering mid-70s Eurodisco, its lyrics clearly written with one eye on the dancefloors of gay clubs. It was rerecorded for Jones’s 1977 debut album, Portfolio, with an arrangement by the Salsoul Orchestra’s Vince Montana and a stronger vocal, but the original drips with slightly shonky period charm.
19. The Hunter Gets Captured By the Game (1980)
Warm Leatherette, released in 1980, relocated Jones to Nassau’s Compass Point studios, introduced reggae rhythm section Sly and Robbie and saw her covering Roxy Music and postpunk. Jones’s take on the old Marvelettes hit is closer to her old self, but it’s fantastic: gently reggae-influenced, post-disco dance music.
18. Victim (1995)
During the period between Jones’s 1989 flop Bulletproof Heart and 2008 comeback Hurricane, she briefly reunited with producer Tom Moulton. The solitary track they completed (but never officially released), a cover of a 1978 Candi Staton single, is a discohouse delight that Moulton claimed was the best thing they ever did together.
17. Am I Ever Gonna Fall in Love in New York City? (1978)
As a man who started out making mixtapes for the Sandpiper, a cornerstone of the gay party scene on Fire Island, Moulton knew the audience Jones was initially targeted at. He insisted she record showtunes, while the original material they made together had a hint of Broadway, as evidenced by this glorious slice of lovelorn high camp.
16. She’s Lost Control (1980)
Jones appears to turn Joy Division’s classic on its head: she recites the words in a blank sprechgesang at odds with Ian Curtis’ mournful delivery and changes the lyrics so the song’s narrator is its subject rather an observer. But its conclusion, where her voice becomes a terrified scream, is every bit as harrowing and bleak as the original.
15. The Apple Stretching (1982)
For all Jones’s fierce image – and the verses in this Melvin Van Peebleswritten song about hookers, gun-toting cops and air that smells of “bagels and pollution” – there’s a real softness and warmth about her delivery of the chorus; the New Yorker’s love-hate relationship with the city encapsulated in a song.
14. Warm Leatherette (1980) Jones’s cover of this JG Ballardinfluenced,
Throbbing Gristle-esque 1978 single by Daniel Miller’s project the Normal was an inspired move, killing off her disco diva image at a stroke in favour of something darker and harder. Is there a more Grace Jones 2.0 lyric than “quick, let’s make love before we die”?
13. Atlantic City Gambler (1979)
Muse, Jones’s third and final album with Moulton, was a commercial failure, but deserves reappraisal. Side one’s suite of songs offers a tougher and starker take on disco than its predecessors, while on the super-cool, reggae-influenced Atlantic City Gambler, the opening song of side two, you can distinctly hear the roots of what was to follow.
12. Victor Should Have Been a Jazz Musician (1987)
The making of 1987’s Inside Story was fraught – Jones and co-producer Nile Rodgers didn’t get on – and its sound veered close to straightforward mainstream pop, but it had its moments. The understated, small-hours romance of this ballad is just beautiful.
11. My Jamaican Guy (1982)
A patois-thick depiction of Jones’s love for Bob Marley’s keyboard player Tyrone Downie that doesn’t preclude mocking him as a hopeless stoner – “stretching out ’pon the floor, that way ’im don’t fall over” – the sweaty relentlessness of My Jamaican Guy’s bassheavy backing seems to mirror the unrequited nature of her obsession.
10. Demolition Man (1981)
The first single from Jones’s masterpiece Nightclubbing was written by Sting – she’d requested a song from him, so he sent a demo for this, which the Police hadn’t got around to recording. It vanished without a trace, but its quality – boastful lyrics set to relentless Suicide-esque synths and guitar noise – is there for all to hear.
9. Nightclubbing (1981)
Iggy Pop and David Bowie’s paean to seedy Berlin nightlife might have been written for Jones, a nightclub fixture throughout the late 70s and 80s. She squeezes every drop of decadence out of the lyrics, shifting the song’s rhythm from diseased glam stomp to eerie dub.
8. Nipple to the Bottle (1982)
“I won’t give in and I won’t feel guilty – you rant and rave to manipulate me” – today, Nipple to the Bottle’s topic would be called misogynistic gaslighting. Its depiction of a love affair gone sour is set to hard, spare funk; Jones, meanwhile, is in commanding, enough-of-your-bullshit form.
7. Do or Die (1978)
The work of the songwriters behind Tina Charles’s chart-topping I Love to
Love – and Gloria Gaynor’s fantastic (If You Want It) Do It Yourself – Do or Die was the apotheosis of disco-era Jones. It’s lengthy and lavishly orchestrated, with the singer playing up to her tough image: “I’ve been called an operator, I can sell an Eskimo snow.”
6. Williams’ Blood (2008)
After 19 years of stalled projects (a shelved album, Black Marilyn; a collaboration with Tricky), Hurricane was Jones’s triumphant return, a sharp retooling of the Compass Point sound that stirred industrial music into the mix. The autobiographical Williams’ Blood was its highlight: an epic remix by Aeroplane was the late 00s nu-disco movement at its height.
5. I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango) (1981)
Used to striking effect in the 1988 movie Frantic, I’ve Seen That Face Before is a stunning reggae remake of an Argentinian tango classic, topped with Jones’s own dark lyrics about sleazy Parisian nightlife. The video, meanwhile, featured a flat-topped, suit-sporting, accordion-playing Jones dwarfed by her own shadow: among the most iconic images of her career.
4. La Vie en Rose (1977)
Reinterpreting Edith Piaf ’s signature song as bossa nova – complete with a musical nod to Jimmy Webb’s MacArthur Park – was inspired; emotive, but breezy at the same time. It launched Jones as a European star and became a staple of “sleaze” sets – which dropped the tempo as the night wore on – in US gay clubs.
3. Private Life (1980)
The Pretenders’ original is trashtalking, reggae-influenced new wave, a perfect fit for the icy persona Jones had already begun projecting on 1979’s Muse. Sly and Robbie turn the music into reggae proper, Jones oozes contemptuous, bored hauteur – “I’m very superficial” – with incredible results: a star was (re)born.
2. Pull Up to the Bumper (1981)
The pinnacle of Jones’s Compass Point years, Pull Up to the Bumper exists in its own fabulous, humid musical space, its mid-tempo groove equidistant from funk and reggae. The lyrics are preposterous cars/sex doubleentendre filth, lent an appealing edginess by Jones’s stentorian vocal. Forty years on, it hasn’t dated.
1. Slave to the Rhythm (Blooded)
(1985)
Only ZTT – the label behind Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s umpteen 12in remixes – would have considered rebooting Jones’s career with an album consisting entirely of versions of one song. Researchers for an unreleased box set discovered that star producer Trevor Horn had recorded more than 70 versions of Slave to the Rhythm. Releasing them all would have been a ridiculous exercise had the track itself not been the best thing either Jones or Horn ever made. A supremely sophisticated sample-heavy concoction, the song glides elegantly over a rhythm rooted in go-go – the funk sub-genre that counted as the hippest dance music of the mid-80s – while her vocal is by turns tender and imperious. The original 12in mix is the keeper.