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| The band's all here. For a time. |
On the one hand, who does not know this song? On the other, who knows where it came from and how that connects it to a musical legend?
The Hit
For anyone who has ever wondered what puts the digital fry into vocals in the verses in Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown,” it’s a vocoder, the parent (or grandparent) of Auto-Tune. For anyone who thinks of it as a disco anthem, it dropped nine months after the rightly infamous Disco Demolition Night. As noted on the official Funky Town site:
“’Funkytown’ put the Minneapolis group Lipps, Inc. on the map, at a time when popular music was pre-Prince and post-punk. The obituaries for disco were being written; Lipps, Inc. put the funeral on hold.”
Shit. I meant to bury the Prince reveal, but the way he flits on the edges of the story flags an important divide in the larger, yet brief narrative.
As for the song, it starts with a naked kick-drum that could lead into just about any pop song. To put the rest in a Name That Tune frame, I’m guessing 40% of contestants when the rattling cowbell comes in (0:04); the snare drum (0:08) doesn’t give much away, but the honking car horn (0:12) might knock another handful of contestants off the fence; another 20% would catch on with the loping bass (0:23), and I’m confident you’d arrive at 100% after the first four notes on the keys, maybe even two. It’s a lot of wash-rinse-repeat from there and the album mix probably goes on longer than you think (just south of eight minutes), but, when you’re on the dancefloor (probably a touch high), you don’t give a shit. As the great Marv “The Leatherman” Gomez says in the film classic, Thank God It’s Friday, “Dancing! Everything else is bullshit!”
Musically, it serves a purpose. Thematically, it speaks to something broader. From a 2018 edition of Time Out from “Funkytown’s” Wikipedia page:
The Hit
For anyone who has ever wondered what puts the digital fry into vocals in the verses in Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown,” it’s a vocoder, the parent (or grandparent) of Auto-Tune. For anyone who thinks of it as a disco anthem, it dropped nine months after the rightly infamous Disco Demolition Night. As noted on the official Funky Town site:
“’Funkytown’ put the Minneapolis group Lipps, Inc. on the map, at a time when popular music was pre-Prince and post-punk. The obituaries for disco were being written; Lipps, Inc. put the funeral on hold.”
Shit. I meant to bury the Prince reveal, but the way he flits on the edges of the story flags an important divide in the larger, yet brief narrative.
As for the song, it starts with a naked kick-drum that could lead into just about any pop song. To put the rest in a Name That Tune frame, I’m guessing 40% of contestants when the rattling cowbell comes in (0:04); the snare drum (0:08) doesn’t give much away, but the honking car horn (0:12) might knock another handful of contestants off the fence; another 20% would catch on with the loping bass (0:23), and I’m confident you’d arrive at 100% after the first four notes on the keys, maybe even two. It’s a lot of wash-rinse-repeat from there and the album mix probably goes on longer than you think (just south of eight minutes), but, when you’re on the dancefloor (probably a touch high), you don’t give a shit. As the great Marv “The Leatherman” Gomez says in the film classic, Thank God It’s Friday, “Dancing! Everything else is bullshit!”
Musically, it serves a purpose. Thematically, it speaks to something broader. From a 2018 edition of Time Out from “Funkytown’s” Wikipedia page:
