Diana Ross

Essential Albums

  • Diana
    Diana
    Diana

    When Diana Ross approached Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards to write her 1980 album, Diana, she had a simple goal: to have fun. She was in her mid-thirties, already a legend. Rodgers and Edwards had enjoyed a string of hits with Chic—whose 1979 release Risqué was a major album—and as the musical backbone of Sister Sledge (“We Are Family,” “He’s the Greatest Dancer”). But for as polished as they were—how subtly they managed to aggregate the rhythmic grittiness of funk into the Black bourgeois professionalism of Ross’ Motown—they were also playful in ways that never felt cartoonish or put-on. Sophisticated, yes. But also fun. For as well-known as the music is—“Upside Down” was Ross’ first No. 1 single in four years, and “I’m Coming Out” is arguably her best-known song—Diana didn’t have an easy birth. The cultural backlash to disco had come to a head less than a year earlier, when about 50,000 people showed up at a baseball stadium in Chicago to destroy disco albums in an event that devolved into a riot. They claimed to hate the music, but given how Black and gay it was, you wonder if it wasn’t something else. (And given how bloated and indistinct corporate rock had gotten by the late 1970s, you wonder if that same something had prevented them from hearing Chic as one of the most rhythmically interesting guitar-based bands outside punk at the time.) That disco backlash had Ross worried. Rodgers later said the singer had come to him on the verge of tears, claiming a prominent radio DJ had told her the music would end her career. And while Ross had been the one to bring Rodgers and Edwards on to begin with, she and others at Motown thought the original Diana recordings obscured the character of her voice. So they remixed it significantly—a discrepancy listeners can explore through the original Chic mixes, included on the expanded edition. The famous story about “I’m Coming Out,” meanwhile, is that Rodgers saw a host of men dressed in Ross drag at a Manhattan bar, and ran out to call Edwards on the phone. I’m coming out, he said—like a gay version of James Brown singing “Say it Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud.” A good start.

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About Diana Ross

Once an aspiring fashion designer, the powerhouse singer Diana Ross epitomized Motown’s appeal in the ’60s: She was ever-elegant, gracious, beautifully turned out—and her crystalline voice transcended everyday troubles like a little slice of heaven. Ross was born in 1944 in Detroit, and by the time she was 15 years old, the city had become a cultural hotbed teeming with musicians and an upwardly mobile Black middle class that was ready to enjoy the good life. Ross—who had sung in church—joined a vocal group called The Primettes; they went on to sign with Motown and were renamed The Supremes. As lead singer, Ross helmed an astonishing 12 No. 1 singles, including the evanescent “Baby Love,” and became a defining voice of the ’60s: unfailingly joyful, poised, and glamorous. Her solo career, which kicked off in 1970, proved that her explosive appeal would continue, with hits like her astral take on “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and the collegial “Reach Out and Touch (Somebody’s Hand).” As the times changed, so did Ross: She tried her hand at musicals, including the Billie Holiday biopic Lady Sings the Blues, Mahogany, and The Wiz, and embraced disco with songs like “Love Hangover.” The 1980 release Diana put her simmering career back at a boil thanks to the jangly Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards-penned dance-floor-fillers “Upside Down” and “I’m Coming Out.” Over the years, the singer has remained a powerful, arena-filling live performer, both on her own and with reunited Supremes. She’s widely considered one of the most successful and influential female entertainers of all time, lighting the path for future pop royalty including Madonna, Beyoncé, and countless others.

FROM
Detroit, MI, United States
BORN
March 26, 1944
GENRE
R&B/Soul

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