Happy 40th Anniversary to Chaka Khan’s fifth studio album I Feel For You, originally released October 1, 1984.
If this were the first Chaka Khan album you ever heard, it would introduce some of her most popular songs. It would also obscure her artistic identity almost entirely.
Through the 1970s, Khan established herself as lead singer of Rufus, a dynamic soul band known for the sweaty “Tell Me Something Good” with its oom-wakka-oom-wakka motif and the charming singalong “Sweet Thing,” both of which Khan co-wrote. Her solo breakout was propelled by the feminist disco manifesto “I’m Every Woman.” Then, as if wiping down a dry-erase board, she did away with it all to gamble on something extraordinarily new.
Parting with the analog-forward funk of previous ‘80s albums, I Feel For You made a once-in-a-lifetime leap into the pop stratosphere. 1984 seemed to open a unique portal in the American racial music divide allowing mainstream breakthroughs for Prince, Michael Jackson, Donna Summer, Tina Turner, and others. Khan was about to finally taste some of their success.
Speaking of Prince, ever since Khan heard “I Feel For You” on his self-titled sophomore release (1979), she was keen to do a version of it and she wasn’t the only one. The Pointer Sisters included it on So Excited (1982) and surprisingly, the eldest Jackson sibling Rebbie cut it for her debut Centipede (1984), but before she could get that into the marketplace, it had already been upstaged by Chak-Chak-Chaka-Chaka Khan.
Certainly, hearing Melle Mel’s now-iconic name-checking rap on the radio in August 1984 was quite a shock for Rebbie Jackson, but it was also a shock for Chaka. When she recorded it with primary album producer Arif Mardin, the Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five rapper wasn’t on it. The hypermasculine, objectifying verse was key to the single becoming a hit, but as most know, Khan hated it—absolutely head-in-hands hated. The focus on her name was destined to put her under a hotter spotlight than she ever wanted. But this kind of smash would please the suits at Warner Bros. Records thoroughly.
With a synergy of hip-hop and dancefloor friendly rhythm à la Stevie Wonder’s “That Girl,” “I Feel For You” immediately grabs one’s attention. Stevie Wonder himself plays harmonica on the tune, and snippets of his youthful “Fingertips” get worked into the bridge (“jussa one more time… say yeah!”). Among hefty layers of synthesizers that blink and effervesce, renowned session player Reggie Griffin contributes springy slap bass that grounds the track beneath Khan’s joyously unleashed voice.
The gold-certified accomplishment notched #1 on the US R&B, US Dance, and UK Singles charts. Centering the burgeoning movement of hip-hop and breakdancing in its second of two videos, “I Feel For You” was, if not the first R&B fusion with rap, easily the most successful to date. All-in-all, Khan’s reinterpretation outstripped all prior takes—including Prince’s. And she was fond of reminding the proud musician of as much.
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In an era that touted “you’re only as good as your last 4½ minutes,” Khan had a flashy maneuver to keep her momentum going. “This Is My Night,” written by The System’s Mic Murphy and David Frank, sparks the same ignition as the title track but with searing electric guitar to ratchet up the energy. A big budget glitz-camp music video co-starring Princess Bride actor Wallace Shawn promotes the single. In the carefully choreographed black-and-white clip, Khan is as glamorous and thespian as she’s ever been, helping to collect her next #1 Dance single.
Amid all this activity, Khan would win her fifth GRAMMY for Best R&B Vocal Performance, Female in February of 1985. This helped her launch a third single, the David Foster-produced “Through The Fire.” This smoky ballad only made modest Top 20 headway on R&B and Adult Contemporary charts, but became a signature song nonetheless. While it’s likely a favorite for slow dances and hairbrush lip syncs, it’s intimidating to cover. Khan’s full-voiced G# on “I’ll take it all the way” is unreachable by the average songstress.
What should have been even bigger than that was “Stronger Than Before” with its mesmerizing, colored chord shifts and exposition of Khan’s supernatural upper range. She delivers the verses with equanimity before an octave-stacked lead broadcasts the pleading refrain. By the vamp, her “stronger” ad-libs are falling to earth like a meteor shower. Previously touched by Dionne Warwick, Marie Osmond, Mother’s Finest priestess Joyce Kennedy, and its songwriter Carole Bayer Sager, Khan’s rendition stands out as the one with the most blues bluster and passion.
Initially, Top 20 UK single “Eye To Eye” was a sleeper that didn’t thrill me, but subtlety is its charm. With kicks that bounce, claps that splash, and super-clean accessory guitar, it’s a stroll so suburban, it takes on a sitcom theme song feel. Against this idyllic Russ Titelman backdrop however, Khan’s voice grieves a romantic stalemate (“There’s no reason for this heartache / To go on and on when the feeling’s gone / I can see now that it’s too late / to try and change your mind”). This track helps balance out the record’s more extreme antics.
Follow the trail of “My Love Is Alive” back to Gary Wright’s initial 1975 bluesy reading of the tune, it gives a clue to who Khan is. Had it been on What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me (1981) or Chaka Khan (1982), it would’ve been grooved up with Moogy basslines, Seawind Horns, and a Tony Maiden-caliber axeman. Its transformation on I Feel For You makes it a wholly different beast: ping-pong panned Barbosa & Liggett drums heavily influenced by electro freestyle, heavy echo and delay with stutter-cut vocals. Khan finally breaks through the noise on the jittery chorus (“My love is alive / My heart's on fire / Soul is like a wheel / Like a hot wire”).
Like the former, “La Flamme” is neon-colored and just as unsubtle. One of few Khan co-writes, this oddity casts her as a mysterious temptress. While it’s no “Lady Marmalade,” Khan’s foreign come-ons are cutesy fun (“Je m'appelle la Flamme / Mon nom est Chaka Khan”). Meanwhile, non-sequitur blips of “Ain’t Nobody” and “What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me,” highlight how novel sampling was in 1984. Later, phased chords lend an alien feel to the furtive “Caught in the Act.” While it falls far short of the gotcha in Nancy Wilson’s “Guess Who I Saw Today,” Khan’s attitude sells the soap opera sentiment when she acronymizes the title with a “C-I-T-A!”
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The way Future Shock (1983) is a commercial outlier in Herbie Hancock’s storied jazz career warped by the gravitational pull of hip-hop and nascent music technology, I Feel For You is the same for Khan. While the album is somewhat weakened by lesser filler material (“Hold Her,” “Chinatown”), those missteps can’t dull the shine of its career-making megahits. Here, the parts are greater than the sum of its whole. Khan turned in excellent vocals on the record although the brassiness of its technology often raised its voice louder than the woman herself.
“I felt really distanced from [I Feel For You],” she concedes in her autobiography Chaka! Through The Fire (2003). “The pressure had been so intense to have a commercial album that I let myself get a bit ‘bullied’ into not having a lot of say. Don’t get me wrong! I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth. I Feel For You went platinum; that album did a lot for me careerwise.”
The sonic pivot continued on Destiny (1986), an attempt to again fuse pop and R&B, but this time with rock as the adhesive instead of hip-hop and dance. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t quite stick.) The Woman I Am (1992) got her back on track, but it would be decades before Khan again centered body-moving music on Hello Happiness (2017). Even then, the spirit would not be readily recaptured. I Feel For You was the product of a state American culture was in, commercially super-charged, devastatingly of-the-moment. Knowing such zeitgeists are elusive, it becomes a precious time capsule—sounding every bit like the year it was made, glorious in its gaud.
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