album rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Disco / funk / R&B / dance. C'est Chic is the second studio album by Chic, the American band built around guitarist Nile Rodgers (born New York, 19 September 1952) and bassist Bernard Edwards (born Greenville, North Carolina, 31 October 1952 – Tokyo, 18 April 1996), released in 1978 on Atlantic Records. It was produced and arranged in its entirety by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, with co-production by Marc Kreiner and Tom Cossie. Engineering was by Bob Clearmountain (with Burt Szerlip on one track). The concertmaster was Gene Orloff and the album was mastered by Dennis King. Strings were contributed by Cheryl Hong, Karen Milne and Marianne Carroll. Vocalists on the album include Alfa Anderson, Luci Martin, Luther Vandross (then a backing vocalist early in his career) and Diva Gray. Chic had formed from a New York session musicians community — Rodgers and Edwards had previously worked together under the name The Big Apple Band — and by 1977 had signed to Atlantic with a sound that fused jazz harmony and European melodic sophistication with the physical force of funk and the elegance of disco. Rodgers later said: 'The only real way to understand Chic is in hifalutin terms. Our chord progressions were based on European modal melodies. I made those early Chic records to impress my jazz friends.' Inspired by Roxy Music's visual and conceptual ambition, Chic presented themselves as disco's most stylish act — aspiring businesspeople in designer suits, purveying music they described as containing 'deep hidden meaning.' C'est Chic contains eight tracks: 'Chic Cheer', 'Le Freak', 'Savoir Faire', 'Happy Man', 'I Want Your Love', 'At Last I Am Free', 'Sometimes You Win' and '(Funny) Bone'. The album's centrepiece is 'Le Freak' — composed in Edwards' apartment on New Year's Eve 1977 after Rodgers and Edwards had been turned away from Studio 54 when attempting to visit Grace Jones. The frustrated refrain originally ran 'Aaa, fuck off' (directed at the doormen of Studio 54); revised to 'Aaa, freak out', it became one of the most commercially successful singles of the entire disco era. The European edition of the album was originally titled Très Chic.
Label: Atlantic Records (USA), 1978.
Producers: Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (CHIC Organization). Co-producers: Marc Kreiner, Tom Cossie. Engineer: Bob Clearmountain.
Recording studio: Not individually specified in publicly available sources; recorded in New York City.
Critical reception: C'est Chic was widely praised for the precision and sophistication of its production. Rolling Stone's Stephen Holden wrote that it 'perfected their polished signature sound' and described 'voices and strings hang like a satin backdrop behind Edwards' elegantly defined bass and Rodgers' scrubby guitar.' Billboard praised the album's genre versatility, noting that 'Le Freak' was the standout but that 'Savoir Faire' featured nimble guitar work and 'At Last I Am Free' was a 'straightforward soul ballad.' The Globe and Mail called it 'a sleekly elegant variation' of disco. C'est Chic was Billboard's 1979 R&B Album of the Year.
Commercial success: 'Le Freak' reached number 1 on the US Hot 100, the US R&B chart and the US Club Play chart, spending six weeks at number 1 and selling six million copies in the United States alone — making it the best-selling single in the history of Atlantic Records (and its parent company Warner Music Group) until Madonna's 'Vogue' in 1990. 'I Want Your Love' reached number 5 R&B, number 7 pop and number 4 in the UK. The album itself reached number 4 on the Billboard album chart and topped the US R&B album chart for eleven weeks. It was certified platinum by the RIAA. In the UK the album peaked at number 2 and was certified Gold by the BPI. Chic was subsequently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Nile Rodgers, for Musical Excellence, 2017).
text generated by artificial intelligence — claude, sonnet 4.6 — free version, liable to contain errors