Review

November, 11th 2016

This is an interesting fusion of soul and disco that transforms our opinion about the impossibility to combine these two genres. The essence of it, performed by African-American singer George McCrae is about a hot pulsing desire to possess a certain girl, whom he wants so bad – he wants to be taken in her arms, to be embraced, to be rocked by her and to feel as she opens her heart for him. After she does that, he expects a loving act to start and she’ll gonna hold him tight with all her might. After, the entire process of loving shall continue flowingly and easy, without hurrying up. Basically, this is all as for the essence.
Now, as for positions and general information about this song, we’ll tell you the following. It was recorded in 1974 and there was a whole list of countries, where this song lasted on the peak positions. But before we address this information, we shall tell that, as of the end of the year, this song topped at #4 place throughout the year in the UK and was 37th in the US’ Billboards. So the individual countries were: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Nederland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, and the US. Amongst the lists where this song was charted, only New Zealand has the disgracing 34th position for it, while every other gave it #1 or #3 (as it was once in Ireland).
George McCrae was just a singer; the writers were other guys. This song entered the list of exclusive 40 songs that were sold with more than 10 million copies on the hard drives in the world ever. It also was one of the songs that started the music revolution, allowing the disco music to enter the stages and to become popular. Before this single arrived, no one took the disco music seriously.
The original record wasn’t intended for this singer but accidentally he was in the studio when it was recorded. And liked it so much that added his vocal to it and the enormous fusion led to the popularity. As for the influence, it can’t be overestimated – the song was a direct inspiration for ABBA’s outstanding hit ‘Dancing Queen’ and Lennon’s ‘Whatever Gets You Thru The Night.’ This was definitely a success and we may even tell – with some limitations, that this song was an origin of the entire disco genre in the way as it is today.
So, later, it was covered, it was redone and who would tell that the originating person of the genre is now 72-years old fellow looking similarly to James Brown in his big belly-formed shape. Even as of today, this hit remains the loudest hit in the career of George McCrae. The other singles from the collection of 1974 topped several charts but never sounded that loud as it was with this piece. Despite the 16 albums in the own creative path, and the last one of them was even in 2016, George McCrae never influenced the minds of people that much as with this. Pity. Reference: More about George McCrae and his "Rock Your Baby"