Chic – Good Times

9th May 2023 · 1970s, 1979, Disco, Music

In the pantheon of disco music there are two moments that tower above all others. The first is Donna Summer’s I Feel Love – surely the greatest disco song of all time – and this is the second.

Good Times is eight minutes of sheer pleasure. It’s no accident that it’s perhaps the most sampled song of all time in music history; nor that it sold more than five million copies at the time.

That rubbery bassline is of course played by Bernard Edwards, and the jagged guitar licks are by Nile Rodgers himself, while the drummer is the great Tony Thompson, once of Labelle before playing with Chic and Sister Sledge and going on to work with Bowie, Madonna and Rod Stewart.

But I’m sure even a pop trivia expert like Jez Simmonds would struggle to name the vocalists – Fonzi Thornton and Ullanda McCullough, Luci Martin and Michele Cobbs.

Fir all its abiding influence, it’s not entirely original. Nile Rodgers has said it was influenced in part by Kool & The Gang’s 1974 song Hollywood Swinging – which you can hear in the beat.