You didn’t have to like disco to like Chic, who always claimed to be a rock band for the disco generation. And you didn’t have to like Le Freak to find yourself singing along.

It wasn’t their first single – that was the previous year’s Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) – and it wasn’t their second, because that was Everybody Dance.

Both reached the UK top ten, making Chic a fixture on Top of the Pops, but in 1978 their third single, Le Freak, made them global superstars, cementing disco as the world-conquering genre it was, and selling seven million copies.

Nile Rodgers wrote it during a jam session at Bernard Edwards’apartment on New Year’s Eve 1977 after they had been refused entry to Studio 54, where they had been invited by Grace Jones.

The mantra “FREAK OUT!” was originally written as “Fuck off!” – the doorman’s words to the duo.

Rodgers and Edwards were working as session musicians when they met in 1970 and formed a rock band initially named The Boys, but soon changed it to The Big Apple Band, who performed the proto-Chic song Get Away and covered The Bee Gees’ You Should Be Dancing.

Failing to find a record deal, they joined the band New York City who had a hit record on both sides of the Atlantic in 1973 with I’m Doing Fine Now but broke up three years later.

Rodgers was inspired to form Chic after seeing an early Roxy Music gig, planning to create a group where music and image were given equal importance like the rock band Kiss.