This is exactly the kind of song I hated back when it came out in 1982. I thought I was far too cool for disco; I definitely wasn’t ready for post-disco.
It would not be another year before bands like New Order began incorporating dance beats into their guitar-based sound (and I know people who angrily rejected that as well when Blue Monday changed the game for ever).
Yet however much I might have disavowed disco, those songs wormed their way into your ears and Last Night A DJ Saved My Life was one of those – even if the term “earworm” had yet to be coined.
It was sung by an American group called Indeep, with vocals by a Congolese actress, model, singer and dancer called Réjane “Reggie” Magloire, and Rose Marie Ramsey, with a brief proto-rap by Michael Cleveland, the songwriter and founder of Indeep.
Beneath those disco beats it’s an old-fashioned story song: our narrator is bored alone at home and wants to speak to her man, but he’s not answering his phone (cue the sound of a phone ringing off the hook).
He’s probably gone out but that means she can’t reach him because mobile phones and the internet haven’t yet been invented. She ponders leaving him until the DJ of the title plays a hot song, thus saving her from a broken heart.
In the second verse she gets as far as leaving home, but not before she’s had a wee (cue sound of a toilet flushing). She hops into her car but doesn’t get far (cue the sound of an engine starting and tyres squealing) but doesn’t reach her destination.
It sounds almost existential, doesn’t it. and ends with her summing up the key role of the turntablist in mending broken hearts:
“Hey listen up to your local DJ
You better hear what he’s got to say
There’s not a problem that I can’t fix
‘Cause I can do it in the mix
And if your man gives you trouble
Just you move out on the double
And you don’t let it trouble your brain
‘Cause away goes troubles down the drain.”
Sheer poetry, I’m sure you’ll agree.
It gave Indeep their only hit single, reaching a modest No.13 in the singles chart here but reaching the top ten all over Europe and the rest of the world. Sadly for Indeep, the follow-up single, When Boys Talk, failed to match its success, dooming them to be remembered as one-hit wonders.