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Rating: Excellent |
Jones’ first three albums were heavily influenced by disco and cemented her presence in the club scene. If you were to judge her solely on her first three albums, you’d conclude that she was little more than a flashy disco star. Let’s face it, during this period between 1977 and 1980, everyone was going to disco. Rock legends like Rod Stewart and the Rolling Stones were experimenting with the disco sound. Even Ethel Merman released a disco record. The mass appropriation of the genre made it a joke, and luckily for Grace Jones, she shifted gears at just the right time.
With the help of producers Chris Blackwell and Alex Sadkin and the musical backing of The Compass Point All-Stars (featuring Sly Dunbar & Robbie Shakespeare), the songs on Nightclubbing have a reggae-tinged, alternative style that set her apart from many artists of the era. Three of the songs on Nightclubbing were co-written by Jones, including the hit “Pull Up to the Bumper.” Many critics loved the playful double entendre, but if you listened closely you could tell it was a pretty blunt statement. She didn’t mince her words. It was a song that could have come straight from the Penthouse forum, set to a catchy, 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 completely different worlds and we are all better off for it. The surprise on this album is the song “Demolition Man”. Many of you know this song better as a track from The Police’s 1981 LP Ghost In The Machine. Sting wrote the song while visiting Peter O’Toole in Ireland in 1980 and eventually gave it to Jones. The lyric “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 aforementioned Ghost In The Machine, released in October of that same year.
Nightclubbing is a genre-bending, 38-minute, 40-second, new wave/reggae/synth pop, head-bobbing bundle of cool. If you don't know this record, 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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