April 10
By all accounts, the birth of 1980’s diana, a collab between Diana Ross and Nile Rodgers and Bernie Edwards of Chic, was an excruciating one. Diana tore off her headphones and stormed out of the vocal booth when the producers told her she was singing flat and, though the Chic guys managed to woo her back long enough to finish recording, she explained in no uncertain terms upon hearing the final mix that it was a big, steaming pile of disco shit. This was, after all, just a year after Disco Demolition Night at Comiskey, and Diana thought she still smelled the ashes of torched 12 inches lingering in the radio mist. She ended up remixing the entire thing with Motown studio whiz Russ Terrana, and the result was more Diana (vocals front and center), less Chic (extended breaks gone), and went on to spawn megahits “Upside Down” and “I’m Coming Out,” as well as being the biggest selling album of her career. Now, thanks to some digital splicework by Greek DJ Discobody, some of that original long-form Chic appeal returns with this edit of one of the album’s lesser-known tracks, “Tenderness.” He eases us in, pausing on the string stabs to extract a little tension, then lets the groove ride long and easy over 7 glorious minutes, letting us get wonderfully lost in the mix.
– Spoolwork