SONG.REVIEWS
Greatest of All Time!The Incredible Bongo Band's 1973 instrumental never charted as a single, but its drum break became the foundation DJ Kool Herc built hip-hop on top of at Bronx block parties -- and the most sampled breakbeat in music history.
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Greatest of All Time!Throwback Thursday, 2013: the cheapest way to sound like 1979 was to sample it. Daft Punk spent an enormous budget hiring the people who made 1979 instead.
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Greatest of All Time!The Bee Gees wrote 'Stayin' Alive' for a Saturday Night Fever script they hadn't read yet, and the drum loop underneath it exists because the actual drummer couldn't make the session.
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Kirk Franklin & God's Property built a No. 1 R&B radio hit out of a Funkadelic sample and a gospel choir, and split the church over it in the process — the sound of a genre's ceiling getting tested in real time.
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Greatest of All Time!Three Temptations sang backup on Rick James' signature hit -- and its bassline would go on to make more money for James a second time, nine years later, as someone else's No. 1.
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Greatest of All Time!Jamiroquai's 1996 single is still touring 30 years later -- the group's current Latin America dates are explicitly tied to this anniversary -- and the song itself holds up as well as the video does.
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Greatest of All Time!The Bee Gees' first true disco single, 50 years old this year, is also the record John Travolta dances to alone in Saturday Night Fever -- a genre pivot that outlasted the group that made it.
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