8. Lady Marmalade

LaBelle: Nightbirds (Epic, 1974);
composed by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan

Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan were a couple of hacks who wrote two number 1 hits in 1974: a drecky one for Frankie Valli, mercifully supplanted on the charts by this. Not that it was all that much better a song, really. But 1974 was make or break for LaBelle – fronted by Patti LaBelle who never quite broke in the ‘60s and in-house songwriter Nona Hendryx who never wrote a hit – who had three dud albums for other labels to their credit by this time. So Epic hooked them up with Allen Toussaint, who for all intents and purposes gave this tune to New Orleans session drummer, Herman Roscoe Ernest III. This is funk played as an almost entirely straight four, like a march, mostly on the snare, except that Roscoe lays behind the beat, building up so much tension in each verse that when he hits the downbeat at the top of the next one, it swells and crests like an orgasm. And then he keeps putting it where it feels good again and again. Us kids used to hoot about what “Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” meant, but really, the sex described in the lyrics is pretty much redundant.

Note: 25 secular essays about 25 songs, each one exactly 200 words long, appearing one per day (on average) during Advent (or the moral equivalent).