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After the numerous US Number Ones (by British acts) that cropped up on the first disc of this album, we have to wait until the top of the second disc to find the first and only track that topped the UK chart. Ironically, it's by an American group, but it's a single that was unsuccessful in their homeland, peaking only at 75.
Sister Sledge claim their place in pop history largely thanks to a series of hits from their 1979 album We Are Family, written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic fame. Some of this material was revived over here in 1984 with such success that it seemingly helped pave the way for them to chart with new material the following year. It's probably also the reason why I keep getting them mixed up with the Pointer Sisters, but that's another story. Remarkably, Rodgers is back in the producer's chair for this track (which makes him the third ex-member of Chic to fall from grace on this album, after the contributions of Edwards and Tony Thompson to the Power Station track). The song could hardly be more different from the lush, hedonistic disco of their earlier collaborations though; instead it's a rather childish song, which doesn't get away with it even by admitting that it harks back to a teen romance, because the melody is just too facile. In fact, I think I even liked it when I was seven, which just proves the point, really. And the arrangment and performance is quite astonishingly stolid and one-dimensional; it might just about make sense as the work of children but the whole premise of the song is an adult woman meeting Frankie (a name that doesn't lend itself well to singing, by the way, but I suppose it's gender-neutral enough for the songwriter to have been hedging her bets). Perhaps you could compare the storyline to Hot Chocolate's 'It Started With A Kiss', but with none of the depth.
Also appearing on: Now 3, 24
Available on: Definitive Groove: Sister Sledge
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