The original version of this article was published May 9, 2016 at Albumism.
Nightclubbing, Grace Jones’ fifth studio album, masterfully defines her unique musical style. Her previous LP Warm Leatherette was the insanely yummy appetizer leading you into her new sound.
Up until this effort, Jones was primarily known for her covers. This time around, she deconstructed the songs and established herself as an excellent interpreter of other people’s music. Nightclubbing features covers of songs by an array of diverse artists such as Flash & The Pan (“Walking In The Rain”), Bill Withers (“Use Me”), and Astor Piazzolla (“I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)”). Her reggae-styled interpretation of Iggy Pop’s “Nightclubbing” is also a notable achievement.
Jones’ first three albums were heavily influenced by disco and cemented her presence in the club scene. If you were to judge her by her first three albums alone, you would come to the conclusion that she was little more than a campy disco star. Let’s be honest, during this period between 1977 and 1980, everyone and their mother went disco. Rock legends like Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones experimented with the disco sound. Hell, even Ethel Merman put out a disco record. I found the “disco sucks” phenomenon to be rooted in some unspoken hatred of other cultures, but that’s a story for another day. The mass appropriation of the genre made it into a joke and luckily for Grace Jones, she shifted gears just at the right time.
With help from producers Chris Blackwell and Alex Sadkin, and the musical backing of The Compass Point All-Stars (featuring Sly Dunbar & Robbie Shakespeare), the tracks on Nightclubbing have a reggae-tinged, alternative style that set her apart from many artists of the day. Jones had a hand in writing three songs for Nightclubbing, and one of them was the massively popular “Pull Up to the Bumper.”
While many critics appreciated the witty double entendre, its underlying message was quite direct to those paying close attention. It was a song that could’ve been ripped out of the pages of the Penthouse forum set to an infectious, funky beat: “Pull up to my bumper baby / In your long black limousine / Pull up to my bumper baby / And drive it in between.”
Grace Jones and subtlety live in entirely different universes and we are the better for it in every way. “Demolition Man” is the unexpected highlight of this album, a song many of you probably know from The Police’s 1981 LP, Ghost In the Machine. Sting wrote the song while visiting Peter O’Toole in Ireland in 1980 and wound up giving the song to Jones. The lines “I’m a three-line whip, I’m the sort of thing they ban.” is Grace Jones personified. She released it as a single in February 1981, three months before Nightclubbing was released. The Police eventually recorded their own version, which was included on the previously mentioned Ghost In The Machine, released in October of the same year.
I have very fond memories of this album, which was on my turntable a whole lot during the summer of 1981, a.k.a. my summer of underaged drinking and clubbing. I spent many nights at Bonds, Gotham’s and Danceteria that summer. In my mind, Nightclubbing was a part of the unofficial soundtrack to New York City nightlife in ’81. Listeners tuning into a wide variety of radio stations, including WBLS and the now-defunct WLIR, would have heard tracks from the album playing all the time.
“Nightclubbing” is a 38:40 genre-fluid musical experience blending New Wave, reggae, and synth-pop into a cool, head-bobbing sound. If you’re unfamiliar with this record, then I suggest you check it out. To quote one of Grace Jones’ songs, “…and now ladies and gentlemen, here’s Grace.”
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