The following piece originally appeared as an entry in Popdose’s Most Disturbing Halloween EVER! series.
“Everyday People” entered the Billboard Top 40 on January 4, 1969. Six weeks later it was the number-one song in the country, holding onto the top spot for an entire month. The lead single from Sly & the Family Stone’s upcoming album Stand!, it espoused “different strokes for different folks,” with the group’s leader, Sly Stone, assuring listeners that “I am no better and neither are you / We are the same whatever we do.”
Later that year the “psychedelic soul” band from San Francisco — featuring black, white, male, and female members — played the Woodstock festival, taking the stage at three in the morning on August 17 with inspirational anthems like “You Can Make It If You Try” and “I Want to Take You Higher,” which quickly moved the predawn crowd out of their sleeping bags and onto their feet.
In hindsight, it was as high as Sly & the Family Stone would go.
On January 10, 1970, their first single of the new decade, the double-A-sided “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” and “Everybody Is a Star,” landed in the Top 40, and within a few weeks had become the band’s second chart topper.
Ushering in the era of bottom-heavy ’70s funk dominated by bands like Kool & the Gang, Ohio Players, and Earth, Wind & Fire, “Thank You” featured a harder sound than the Family Stone’s previous hits, with Larry Graham’s percussive thump-and-pluck bass dominating the track alongside Cynthia Robinson and Jerry Martini’s trumpet-and-sax combo. Sly’s lyrics weren’t exactly relegated to the background, but expectations of good-time vibes from the group that recorded “Dance to the Music” tended to obscure lines like “Flamin’ eyes of people fear burnin’ into you” and “Dyin’ young is hard to take / Sellin’ out is harder.”
The lyrics that typically stand out on first listen are the titles of previous Family Stone hits incorporated into the third verse: “Dance to the music all night long / Everyday people sing a simple song.” It comes across as playful — a clever summation of the Family Stone’s triumphs in the decade just ended.
We have our first-ever request at Bottom Feeders. A few weeks ago it was requested in the comments that I include Kon Kan’s “Puss ‘n Boots” in a future post — so here it is! Of course, that’s just the way the ball bounces, since you could pick up the Billboard Hot 100 book and predict every post of the rest of the series and write them up far better than I ever could, way before I do. Hey, don’t get any ideas now. Look me in the eyes. Mine. Mine. Got it?
Kool & the Gang have to rank as the second-greatest R&B act of the ’80s, right behind Michael Jackson, and they’re not even that far behind. Over their career they’ve had 32 songs hit the Hot 100, with another ten for good measure if you count the R&B chart. The greatest thing about Kool & the Gang is that they didn’t really drop off like most R&B/funk artists did by the mid- to late ’80s. Cameo and the Gap Band really started creating crap and almost remaking their own tunes by the close of the decade while Kool & the Gang remained fresh throughout. Of these three “Steppin’ Out” is certainly the most recognizable of the group, though even “Holiday” and “Special Way” are well known. I could listen to Kool & the Gang all day, every day and never get tired of them. They are quite a high point for me in the ’80s.
