Happy 40th Anniversary to Sister Sledge’s fifth studio album All American Girls, originally released February 2, 1981.
It has been said that all great things start off as a dream nurtured by one’s determination, drive and imagination. For Debbie, Joni, Kim and Kathy Sledge—the sibling quartet that came to be known as Sister Sledge—music was their shared dream and ambition.
The sisters’ determination, drive and imagination were integral in spurring them on to band together as aspiring professional singers in 1971 under the matriarchal auspices of their late mother (Florez Sledge) and grandmother (Viola Williams). That same year, Sister Sledge began gigging throughout New York, New Jersey and their home turf of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; this led them to Money Back Records—a local imprint operated by Marty Bryant. It is there that Sister Sledge cut their plush first single “Time Will Tell.”
What happened afterward was owed to a blend of the group’s ceaseless work ethic and just a pinch of good fortune. A deal with ATCO Records in 1972—a subsidiary of its parent company Atlantic Records—put the foursome on the path to create their accomplished debut Circle of Love (1975), which subsequently opened the door for their equally impressive sophomore affair Together (1977).
Both albums teemed with punchy R&B-disco rhythms and gorgeous melodies that beautifully framed Sister Sledge’s crisp, full vocal approach. But Sister Sledge wasn’t the only girl group on the scene in the mid-to-late 1970s; that crowded field included The Supremes, Love Unlimited, The Emotions, The Three Degrees, The Jones Girls and The Pointer Sisters, which in turn made it difficult for Circle of Love or Together to work their magic on an already overstimulated record buying public.
By now, Sister Sledge had been shuffled to the Cotillion arm of Atlantic. Still invested in the four-piece, the imprint suggested a production team-up with labelmates Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, pilots of the disco-funk outfit Chic. Eager to improve their commercial standing, Sister Sledge agreed to the pairing and the resulting We Are Family (1979) catapulted them into the stratosphere—but at a cost. While Edwards and Rodgers successfully resurfaced Sister Sledge’s established sonic profile with the sumptuous vibe of the Chic Organization, their personality was dimmed in the process.
Ready to take back their creative voice and maintain a working relationship with Edwards and Rodgers, Sister Sledge made sure to inject more of themselves into Love Somebody Today (1980), the posh follow-up to We Are Family. It was unceremoniously greeted by a sweeping anti-disco backlash and was subsequently lost beneath the accompanying din of that musical and cultural insurrection. Refusing to be consigned to the annals of the disco genre, Sister Sledge saw the changing musical landscape as an opportunity to demonstrate their own adaptability. In that spirit of desired evolution, the young women sought guidance from a new source: Narada Michael Walden.
Walden, a top tier songwriter and producer, had cut five albums from 1977 through to 1980 for Atlantic after serving as a prominent session player in the Mahavishnu Orchestra—a progressive rock and jazz fusion clique—beforehand. All parties involved were aware of the others’ achievements up to that point and this mutual admiration birthed an immediate, singular rapport between Walden and Sister Sledge that was essential for their fifth studio set, All American Girls.
Walden helmed the production, music and lyrics of the project with support from writer-musicians Bob Allen, Jeff Cohen, Gary Cooke, Randy Jackson, Frank Martin, Allee Willis and his first wife Lisa Walden. Notably, two-fourths of Sister Sledge—Kathy and Joni—contributed lyrically too; Joni nabbed two co-writing credits while Kathy logged four writing credits overall, two co-writing and two lead. One of these leads had her partner exclusively with arranger and soon-to-be husband, Phillip Lightfoot. And in sharp contrast to their first four long players, Sister Sledge co-produced All American Girls alongside Walden—it was a maneuver rarely practiced by any female vocal group in that era, genres aside.
Taking stock of the sounds at play around them in 1981, Sister Sledge unflinchingly embraced post-disco funk, new wave, various synth-driven elements and general R&B finery across the ten-track expanse of All American Girls. Going big at its outset, the first three selections—the title entry, “He’s Just a Runaway” and “If You Really Want Me”—are segued with the power pop of “He’s Just a Runaway” ingeniously sandwiched between the steamy soul of “All American Girls” and “If You Really Want Me.”
Musically, the LP continues ahead at this progressive, energetic pace. Further floorfillers like “Ooh, You Caught My Heart” and “Music Makes Me Feel Good” demonstrate how Walden astutely mined the digital sonics of the period and matched them to expert live instrumentation. These two jams—and others on All American Girls—prove that Sister Sledge still held sway over the dancefloor separate from their anterior disco incarnation.
The four mellower sides of All American Girls are just as engaging as the uptempo cuts; three ballads—“Next Time You’ll Know,” “Don’t You Let Me Lose It,” “I Don’t Want to Say Goodbye”—and a jazzy midtempo confection in “Happy Feeling” evince the ease of Sister Sledge’s incomparable vocal blend.
Additionally, outside of their collective abilities, each sister could hold her own alone. Kathy, Kim and Debbie steer their respective leads on “Next Time You’ll Know,” “I Don’t Want to Say Goodbye” and “Happy Feeling”—but it is the late Joni who stuns with the tough R&B rocker “Make a Move.” Her svelte, sensuous tone contrasts beautifully with the track’s kinetic arrangement making it an indisputable highlight within Sister Sledge’s canon. The topical pulse of All American Girls stayed close to the group’s evergreen of romance, but “All American Girls” did break from that tradition as a Venusian charged ode to self-actualization.
Reviewers praised All American Girls for its forward-thinking momentum. Unfortunately, Sister Sledge could not shake the negative disco tag—this prevented the record from the wider exposure it so richly deserved. Overall, the album was a modest seller that yielded four singles during its promotional lifespan: “All American Girls,” “Next Time You’ll Know,” “If You Really Want Me” and “He’s Just a Runaway.”
In the wake of the semi-mixed reception that met “He’s Just a Runaway” from urban outlets, Cotillion/Atlantic hastily commissioned a radio edit that excised its new wave edge for a “friendlier” reggae-soul gait in supposed tribute to Jamaican powerhouse Bob Marley. Marley would tragically succumb to cancer on May 11, 1981, just a few months after All American Girls had hit store shelves in February of that year. However, the real flack that Sister Sledge did catch from their black fan bloc wasn’t because of the rocky constitution of “He’s Just a Runaway,” it was due to the long player’s title piece, “All American Girls.”
President Ronald Reagan had just taken office on January 20, 1981 when Sister Sledge released “All American Girls” as the LP’s initial single; some erroneously mistook its message as a “buy-in” to Reagan’s saccharinely disguised white conformist politics. Ironically, this didn’t stop the single from becoming a smash—it took third place on the U.S. R&B Chart.
Hindsight now reveals that Debbie, Joni, Kim and Kathy were actually taking back the “American dream” on their terms and redefining it for themselves, “We’re all American girls /And we love the life that we lead / We’re all American girls / Hear what we say, know what we mean!” In the end, that song was just one component of a much larger plan of advancement that Sister Sledge actioned with All American Girls on the whole—an album where the foursome boldly plotted the course of where they wanted to go next in the second phase of their recording career.
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