Pre-Funk Siblings in the Battle of F.O.M.O.
The pre-party link between Alicia Bridge’s “I Love the Nightlife” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark”
SISTER ALICIA
As a kid in the 70s, I heard the disco classic “I Love The Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)” everywhere; on radio, during pool parties, in movies, on TV. I believe my sister had the 45” single. I remember my sister and I watching TV at some point, and there was a performance of the tune by the woman who sang it and co-wrote it, Alicia Bridges, whom I was seeing for the first time. And I remember: she scared the hell outta me. I had no idea where she was coming from.
I mean — look at this. As an 9 year-old in Dallas, TX in the 70s, it was confusing:
All that joy-inducing tiger-affectation of her voice on the recording now came across as a bit intimidating. And this is coming from the same person who also used to see Grace Jones on TV as a kid and would think “She’s SO COOL! She’s one of US!”. I could tell that Grace Jones was scary to some, but she was not scary to me.
Meanwhile — my 9-year old brain could get no earthly bearings on this white woman with the racoon-powder eye shadow, and whatever snow planet she came from.
Of course, I look at this now, and see her for exactly what she is: a bad-ass, a legend, an icon. And that outfit is amazing (note the gold chain necktie).
A Southerner (that makes sense), Alicia Bridges was born in North Carolina, and eventually settled into the Atlanta music scene in the early 70s. There are no interviews of her online that I can find, so I am left to believe that this incredibly sassy and idiosyncratic voice of hers, which we all know from “Nightlife” and is 95% of the song’s appeal, is just the way she is in real life.
I wouldn’t even say that this is a white woman trying to imitate a black gospel voice. It’s just… somethin’ else. It’s Alicia Bridges, baby.
She cut a few country tunes in the early 70s, and those recordings — with the exception of the intonation of a few choice words — suggest a more straightforward vocal personality.
But from her 1978 debut ALICIA BRIDGES on and into the 80s, she will have that serpentine James-Bond villain voice that we all adore, so I am left to believe that she blossomed into herself around this time and stayed true to her vocal heart.
I am a fan of 70s Disco, but I have to say that, aside from the parenthetical of the title, there’s an argument to be made that “I Love The Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)” is not a Disco song, and probably why it feels like it has always been with us, will never go away, and will always be relevant.
Most Disco tunes of the era were a Mardi Gras / Brazilian Carnival affair, with a full 5-piece band + 6 backup singers + 5 horns + 8-person double-string-quartet section + 3 auxiliary percussion players….it’s a damn village on those tracks. Which sounds great on club speakers, as the music reflects the full mass of community on the crowded dance floor.
Many Disco records sound like they were recorded on cocaine binges at 2a.m. in the morning (not hyperbole: the backstory to most 70s Disco productions confirm this). There’s also a nervous energy to the Disco of that era: a little frantic, a feeling that something could go dangerously off the rails, it might all explode, that this is high stakes — it’s now or never!
Also — most 70s Disco is imploring you with directives, shouting a wall of verbs at you from a mass unison of authoritarian voices;
“SHAKE SHAKE SHAKE!”
“GET ON UP, ON THE FLOOR”
“BOOGIE OOGIE OOGIE TIL’ YOU JUST CAN’T BOOGIE NO MORE”
“DANCE DANCE DANCE!”
“YOU SHOULD BE DANCING”
“DON’T STOP ’TIL YOU GET ENOUGH”
…the marching orders are endless.
Now — consider the Modest Proposal that is “I Love The Nightlife”.
In interviews, both Bridges and co-writer Susan Hutcheson admit that the song was written as a Memphis soul number, “something that Al Green might sing.” Indeed, right out the gate, this is a mid-tempo tune, performed with a certain level of ease from a small band, where, at full volume, you could still have a conversation over it. There’s even a Hammond Organ: a soul staple, but a rarity for Disco.
Here’s a version of it slowed down 10bpm. Go ahead: sing “Love and Happiness” or “Let’s Stay Together” over this. It works. The chords are different, but the pocket is pure Al Green.
This is indeed a soul song. There’s more of close-held intimacy about this tune, at medium-scale, as opposed to some glittery technicolor Esther Williams explosion.
And then the verse lyrics start — which are also not exactly disco territory.
Please don’t talk about love tonight
Stop right there. Helluva way to start a pop song. Or any conversation. Alicia’s hand is immediately up, and she is demanding that you talk to it, not her. Also — a great anaphoric device she continues with for a while. Let’s keep running down the please don’ts:
……
Please don’t talk about sweet love
Please don’t talk about being true
And all the trouble we’ve been through
Ah, please don’t talk about all of the plans we had
For fixin’ this broken romance
This is a dance classic, but ironically, the setting for the stage play that is this song’s narrative does not take place on the dance floor. This feels like Alicia is in the dining room of her apartment, with her lover / partner / husband (gender is confirmed in second verse)…and she’s sick of him, sick of the situation, and the whole song is her stating her case, clearly and concisely.
But — we’re not on the dance floor yet. We are simply dreaming of it, desiring it, feeling it as our destiny. The antidote to this stalemate conversation.
And while this type of “I gotta leave” energy was famously mined in Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive”, this has none of that high-drama projectile-comet energy. This isn’t an erratic in-the-moment reaction: it’s more a well-thought out response. Alicia is resigned to the situation. You feel it in the coolness of the groove.
I think she had her heated Gloria Gaynor moment weeks ago, but she’s over that need for emotional display now. Alicia is more world-weary about her situation. But also — sounds like she’s thought about it thoroughly, made a decision, and devised a plan.
I want to go where the people dance
I want some action
I want to live
Being the Good Doctor she is, Alicia has the diagnosis, prognosis, and prescription. She needs to go where the people dance. She needs some
ee-YACK-shone. She needs to live. All eternally sound advice, for anyone,
in any situation, at any time in history.
BTW — let’s talk about that ee-YACK-shone — her Alicia-riffic pronunciation of the word “action”. It is the first of a hearty handful of verbal tics that make this song get in your head (more to come…). She knows she has a killer hook with it too — each time she says it in the end verse, she repeats it two lines later.
You could play this song for a bunch of 6 year-olds in the year 2024, and they will say this song is silly and sounds old. Then let them go and play in the backyard, and within 5 minutes it’s guaranteed they will start shouting “ee-YACK-SHONE!” to each other over and over.
Action, I got so much to give
I want to give it
I want to get some too
Modesty is not what disco is about. But this little verse-ender / pre-chorus always gets me. Twice in a row, Alicia says: she has so much to give. She punctuates it with “I want to get some too” — the me-first kicker everyone loves and remembers — but that’s literally an afterthought from her double-emphasis of Her Need to Give. There’s something sweet and touching about her feeling that she wants to make others happy, and can’t do it under these circumstances. She’s a giver. So take her to the place where she can give.
Whoah ho-uh, whoah ho-uh, whoah ho-oh-oh-eyeeeeeeee!
The best part of any pop song is when emotions are so close to the chest and must leap out of the body at all costs, to the point that pre-language reptilian parts of the brain are accessed, and there is nothing left but to spew cave-person utterances that have no linear meaning, yet say it all. It’s Little Richard’s cosmic cry of “Wop bop a loo lop, a wop bam boom!” Language can fail and get in the way of what we really wanna say. Speaking in tongues isn’t a just a last resort, it’s often the best resort.
And this Whoah ho-uh run is Alicia’s express glass elevator up to the gloriously-spinning chorus:
I love the nightlife
I got ta boogie
On the Disco ‘Round
Yeah
This is the main reason it’s considered a disco song. Bridge and co-writer Hutcheson have both said that this song was already in mid-composition when one of them looked at the current list of Top 40 Songs and noticed that every hit tune had the word “disco” or “boogie” in it. So they put the words “disco” and “boogie” in their tune. Badda bing, badda hit.
Regardless! Here is the moment in the confrontation with her lover / partner / husband where Alicia dreams of Step Two: she’s gotta Dance Herself Holy, at one of those there local discotheques. Hutcheson said in an interview that the word “round” was included in an abstract manner, as they were thinking about a vinyl record going around on a turntable. But I like to think of a Disco Round as some Atlanta Dance Club Gauntlet, comprised of 12 locations around town, where in one night, you must dance to at least one tune in all of them, before you can consider the night complete. Similar to the massive one-night 12 Pub Crawl in Edgar Wright’s THE WORLD’S END (2013).
And it’s on that word “round” that Alicia’s Bag of Vocal Tricks pulls out yet another one: pronouncing it in Bridges-speak as “ruh-HOWWWWWND”, as she hits a high C falsetto with such otherworldly conviction that we all look at each other with expressions of disbelief. When Alicia goes out tonight and paints the town, she’s gonna hit some highs. You know how she knows? Cuz she’s hitting some highs vocally, right here, right now, at the dining room in her apartment, across the table from this no-fun schlub. She’s practicing for the real highs she’s gonna go find out in the wild, once she leaves.
Just for fun, she’s gonna hit that high C again and repeat the chorus. Cuz she’s feelin’ it. And so are we.
For the second verse, there is this:
Love and lies just bring me down
When you’ve got women all over town
You can love them all and when you’re through
Maybe that’ll make, huh, a man out of you
It’s the huh that gets everyone. Alicia’s Bag of Vocal Tricks strikes again. That huh says a ton. Online First Reaction videos to that second verse are great — someone always gives stank-face and a “hell yeah” head nod when they hear that huh. (Link below goes straight to second-verse — watch woman’s reaction on the right).
This is not a full-scale LA or Miami production, no Casablanca Records mega-money backing, so Alicia and producer Steve Buckingham had to do as much as they could in their modest little Doraville, GA studio. The adorable 4-note Eb-Eb-D-C glockenspiel figure that concludes the first chorus (link below goes straight to the example) gives a Disney-esque nod to what could have been a bigger, more orchestrated arrangement, but also alludes to the classic “Somewhere Out There”-style exposition songs from Disney Princess films. Like Belle, Ariel, or Tiana, Alicia also dreams of what’s out there beyond her constricting provincial town / underwater kingdom / thankless two waitressing jobs.
But HOLD UP — WAIT A MINUTE. Right here at 2:10, the door blasts wide open and in comes the shirtless-and-screamin’ Tenor Sax Solo you ordered, Extra Urban with a Side of Concrete and Steel (link below goes straight to it). This exhilarating interlude by Jay Scott comes with a free key change, up a whole step, which in any other tune would be cheesy, but it feels so so right here.
This is the sound of Alicia putting aside words — she’s sick of even hearing herself talk — and really trying to manifest the feeling of liberation that she so desires and that this dude — still sitting at the dinner table, flabbergasted that a shirtless sax player is shredding a killer solo in his dining room — is holding her back from.
Observe her unbothered dance during that sax solo, doing an adorable Irish side-jig without a care in the world, practicing for the real dance clubs she will visit tonight. Look at her face: she’s got this. That key change rose up a whole step because Alicia herself is one step closer to walking out that door, and seeing what The Night has to offer.
This is a supremely comforting song. Much of this is due to the backing track. Listen to the instrumental version here:
The drums are simple and functional. But check out the Rhodes piano and the electric guitar. They really have no repeating rhythmic part to which they are committed. Their roles are open. So they proceed to noodle, flaunt, flourish, talk to each other — they play, in the true sense of the word playing, like kids. At 00:21, the bass player goes up high and improvises a little, as if to say “I wanna play too!”.
This is the sound of a band totally at ease with itself. If most Disco tunes were recorded at 2a.m. on a cocaine binge, this song sounds like it was recorded around 7p.m. or 8p.m. at night, as the sun is setting over Doraville, and after the band had a nice dinner together, where everyone drank 1 glass of wine (and no more), and jokes were told, and kidding was had, friends had their arms around each other, and everyone was getting on so well, and someone said — well, let’s get back at it. And they got back in the studio, and out comes a spirit that is relaxed, flirty, jokey, affectionate — a group of people so sure of themselves, and quite enamored with each other. You can hear it. You can feel it.
Now — put Alicia’s vocal performance and lyrics on top of this. This whole song is her resolving to make a better life for herself. There is no ambiguity or uncertainty in her performance or her words. She knows what she needs to do, and where to do it, and how to do it, and is making her statement before she executes the plan.
Maybe she’s just leaving this guy just for now, maybe she’s leaving him for good. But she knows who the hell she is and what she wants, and the self-possession and clarity of her spirit, combined with this convivial musical background, makes you think — I believe her. I have no doubt she will Give Some and Get Some tonight. And, hopefully — forever.
Everything about this tune feels like one long, luxurious, unhurried hug from a friend. A wellspring of confidence and purpose. You just want to bathe in it.
CODA: the surprise is that Alicia’s debut album ALICIA BRIDGES (1978), from which “Nightlife” comes, is quite good. There are no other Disco tunes on it, and the range is wonderfully eclectic. There are bouncy rock tunes perfect for your morning aerobics — “Body Heat” was the second single — some funk with wild tiger vocal acrobatics (“Break Away”), and “High Altitudes”, which marries late 60s psychedelia with Broadway show tunes, and a polytonal ayahuasca breakdown in the middle.
Her label Polydor literally did Alicia dirty with this album cover, a grimy composition with Bridges leaning in a great buffalo stance on an overpass against a sludgy pre-emissions code polluted Atlanta skyline. Looking at this picture makes me cough.
It’s like it was taken next door to the ANIMALS (1977) photo shoot for Pink Floyd. That pig in the sky might fly over onto Alicia’s album cover.
Spotify’s art thankfully brings the downtown romance back by colorizing the scene and putting technicolor city lights behind her.
In both photo compositions, Alicia did her job and served, served, served. She looks amazing. It’s like a pose at 4am, where she finished and conquered the fabled 12-Part Disco Round of Atlanta, and is standing victorious.
BROTHER BRUCE
Across the country, maybe on the same night, but definitely in another city, a man named Bruce is also in his apartment, also trying to get ready for an evening of hitting the town to see What’s Out There. But where Alicia is cool, knowing, resolved, and ready to strut right out that door, Bruce is a damn nervous wreck. This guy needs more work. He’s not ready yet.
I was never a big Bruce Springsteen fan. He always seems like a solid guy, with his politics in the right place. When “Dancing in the Dark” came out in 1984, it was unusual for him — musically, lyrically — and it struck a chord with my 15 year-old self. Which is weird — his music seemed to be about so much adult stuff that was unrelatable — but it makes sense upon further inspection.
Bruce sets the scene in the first verse:
I get up in the evenin’
And I ain’t got nothin’ to say
I come home in the mornin’
I go to bed feelin’ the same way
The first three lines are whispered to us, with some Elvis Presley quivering of the voice. Why is he so quiet? We lean in to hear better hear what he has to say — and he SHOUTS that last fourth line in our ears. This nerve-wracked manic-depressive roller coaster will continue throughout the song.
But also — sounds like his life is empty and lonely right now. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” says Proverbs 27:17. Sounds like he could use some sparks.
I ain’t nothin’ but tired
Man, I’m just tired and bored with myself
Hey there, baby
I could use just a little help
There will be a lot of baby this and baby that, but let’s be clear: no one else is present in this song. This is a scene where a person is talking to themself, in their head. Probably while gripping the bathroom sink too tight. If there was someone else in the apartment with him, he wouldn’t be writing this song. Bruce is home alone, trying to rile himself up to go out into The Night to try to find something or someone (just like Alicia), and all this baby talk is just him practicing into the air to a fictional person who is not there. It’s part of the Psych-Up Process. At this point, looking at the lyrics, he’s apparently still in bed.
You can’t start a fire
You can’t start a fire without a spark
And quickly, we get to the money lines of the chorus, which ring with a golden eternal wisdom. Was this originally from the Qur’an? What this a fortune cookie? Was this the next line after Proverbs 27:17? Was this from the Dhammapada? Didn’t Humphrey Bogart say this to Lauren Bacall in that one movie? This line is so true and so inevitable and so everlasting, I honestly don’t know if it started with this song or came from The Ancients. Seems like it’s been around for a few millennia.
Still — Bruce gets to the point. Enough of this fluttering doubt. He self-starts the spark. He discovers his first shard of resolve.
There is a notable dichotomy between the backing track and Bruce’s vocal delivery. Unlike most songs, Bruce and the band are not coming from the same place. They are at odds with each other. That instrumental backing track is cool, orderly, steady, dependable, reliable, and muscular. This track is the World at Large, and the world keeps turnin’, as always. With you or without you.
Over that, Bruce’s vocal and lyrics are nervous, insecure, messy, doubting, sweaty, and self-deprecating. He’s not in sync with The World. The thrill of this song, almost the video game at hand, is listening to Bruce trying to calibrate himself to that backing track. Bruce trying to get himself together to find his place Out There, outside of this dreary apartment.
Messages keeps gettin’ clearer
Radio’s on and I’m movin’ ‘round my place
In two lines, a great depiction of a modern ritual, and the wonderful voo-doo power and neuroplasticity-inducer that is Pop Music. How many of us walk around the house listening to a playlist of tunes, with snippets of music and lyrics hitting our brains in a non-linear fashion, but in such canny electric manners, so that the synapse gaps fire off and form A Clarity of Purpose. Which is what our messy, sweaty, restless-leg, unshaven protagonist keeps trying to do in this song: get it together, man. You are somebody.
Either way — he’s evolving by now. Alicia came fully formed in “Nightlife”, but here, we are bearing witness to a process.
I check my look in the mirror
Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face
Annnnnnnd we slip right back down again. But, Dear God — what human being doesn’t relate to this. That last line is shouted by Bruce, and people listening to the song tend to shout-sing that line out loud right back at the recording, and it’s always heartbreaking to see how hard that line resonates with everyone. Like Alicia, this Bruce fellow wants to walk out that door into the Wild and see what’s out there, but lacks her Class A Confidence. Unlike Alicia, he just doesn’t know who the hell he is right now.
About three weeks ago, Alicia probably was in her messy “Dancing in the Dark” emotional stage. But Bruce now has to build himself up to “Nightife”’s Eternal Plateau of Purpose. And do it right in front of us, while we listen.
There’s something happening somewhere
Bingo — here’s the thesis of the song, in one line. Even the chord progression tips you off: it drops from the bright B major chord down to an ominous and dramatic G# minor when it hits the word “somewhere”. We are surveying the landscape, zeroing in on our opportunities, attempting to pinpoint where connections can occur on the larger panorama. “Computer,” says Captain Picard, “Locate and Display”….and our playfield dramatically appears on the screen, a buffet table of possibilities.
This is the line from the song that resonated the most when I was a kid. It still stands out now, a bullet of a lyric that needs no secondary couplet line to complete its impact.
You sit around gettin’ older
There’s a joke here somewhere and it’s on me
I’ll shake this world off my shoulders
Come on, baby, the laugh’s on me
Ok, Ok, Ok…at the lone bridge, over mostly major chords, Bruce lightens up a little, makes a joke about himself, loosens the vibes. He is finding a direction, a sense of self. He just might make it.
I’m dyin’ for some action
I’m sick of sittin’ ‘round here tryin’ to write this book
Excuse me: I believe it is pronounced ee-YACK-shone.
You can’t start a fire
Worryin’ about your little world fallin’ apart
This tune is a damn fortune cookie generator. Hell no, you can’t. Not with that attitude.
Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
Even if we’re just dancin’ in the dark
And finally, after 2 minutes and 53 seconds of this housebound self-flagellation, Bruce locates his center. The ups, the downs, the witty asides, the whispers, the screams….he has gone through them all, and now he simply repeats the line “Even if we’re just dancing in the dark”, four times, evenly. At a reasonable volume. Without any erratic bursts. Like a mantra. He even has room to breathe between each line. The Restless Leg Syndrome is gone.
He is finally in sync.
Heyyyy bay-beee!!!
This he shouts, as if to signal I got this, I finally got this, and right on cue at 3:20, a fluffy chiffon ribbon of a tenor sax solo floats down from the heavens, diatonic and free of any tense blues notes, a musical dove bearing an olive branch of peace, as if to signal: Calibration Process Complete. It’s like the musical fanfare during the Victory Screen where the Final Boss level is complete. In this case, the Boss Level was The Boss defeating his own insecurity. Boss defeats Boss.
Or —maybe that backing track was The Confidence he was seeking the whole time. And now, he possesses it.
CODA: Covers of this song are plentiful, and they are all fine. Given the song’s solitary origin, i.e. a song about someone talking to themself while they are home alone and craving connection, the go-to approach is solo guitar, with quiet, close-to-the-chest, lean-in-to-hear-me vocals, for an intimate feel.
Or a stripped down acoustic arrangement.
And while this acknowledges the emotional fragility of the situation on top, the bottom feels like it’s dropped out. The Movie is no longer there.
That massive backing track from the band is The Occasion, and the excitement and exhilaration is in hearing Bruce attempt to Rise — and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise again — to The Occasion. Zeroing in on the “lives of quiet desperation” brittle heart aspect on top is mining a mere sliver of the song’s full experience — but the cinematic sporting element of Witnessing Someone Try is missing. The Thrill is Gone.
The problem with these self-doubt-forward approaches is, I’m not sure if the protagonists in those cover versions are gonna make it out the door. They sound like they are soaking in the Tub of Forlornness, and never leave to even towel off. They are only here for The Sads. Not for The Struggle.
Meanwhile, the delicious delirium of the original “Dancing in the Dark” and its punch-steady backing track is that at the end of his jittery psycho-emotional ride, you believe Bruce found his footing, he’s found his center, and will head out into the world with some strength and self-respect to see what he can make happen. And yet — the song didn’t start out with us knowing that.
Where Alicia’s “Nightlife” is comforting because its self-assuredness is delivered to us so fully-formed, Bruce’s eventual confidence is earned because we witnessed the process of him sweat and bleed and slap himself in the face to finally arrive at this state of self-belief. Whatever it takes, my friend.
And like Alicia, we believe that tonight, he will find something, happening somewhere.
-Korby Sears
July 2024
