"Upside Down" by Diana Ross is a landmark fusion of disco, jazz, and soul, produced by Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. The song emerged from a deep conversation with Ross, who expressed a desire to reinvent her career—resulting in the title and a bold, emotional theme. Rogers and Edwards crafted a complex yet accessible arrangement with syncopated rhythms, unexpected time signatures, and a chromatic modulation that builds tension and releases it in dramatic shifts. The music features a masterful interplay between instruments: the piano’s hook, the Rhodes, and the strings—enhanced with delay and keying techniques—create a layered, dynamic texture. Diana Ross’s vocals are supported by Chic’s staccato backing singers, adding rhythmic energy and depth. A significant point of contention arose when Motown remixed the track, moving Diana’s vocals into the background with added reverb, which the producers felt diluted their vision. Despite this, the song became a career revival for Ross, introducing her to a new generation and inspiring future collaborations, including with Michael Jackson. The track stands as a testament to creative collaboration, genre blending, and the power of hidden meaning in pop music.
- Selectory today, we're talking about one of my favorite, favorite disco songs. It not only features the vocals from the Queen of Motown herself, but the production prowess of Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards of Sheik. - That's right, Della. I cannot wait to unpack what Nile and Bernard did on this track. It's not just arrangement, it's also every single instrument and it's the songwriting. And to be honest with you, it may not even be a disco song here today. - Whoa, that's it! - Really? - Not take, you're ready for it. - Well, respectfully, I may have to disagree with you there, my friend. - Really fun. - You thought I did. - We're talking one song and that song is upside down by Diana Ross. (upbeat music) ♪ Up, side, down ♪ ♪ Boy, turn me ♪ ♪ Inside, out and ♪ (upbeat music) - I'm at the writer-director and sometimes DJ, Della Riddle. - I'm producer DJ, songwriter, musicologist, luxury, AKA the guy who whispers, interpolation. - And this is one song. - The show where we break down the Sims and stories behind iconic songs across genres, telling you why they deserve one more lesson. - You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before and you can watch one song on YouTube while you're there, please like and subscribe. So let's hear today we're talking about upside down the song that I was pleasantly surprised to hear in the last season of Stranger Things. You know, like I gotta say that show does needle drops really well and really explicitly they use two. Not one, two print songs in the finale. And a few years ago, Kate Bush is running up that hill. - Right. - Got sort of a new lease online. - Don't forget about Master of Puppets, right? - Master of Puppets. - Master of Puppets. - We'll be able to listen to our Metallica. - It's a classic. - It's classic. - Can in songs with that we share taste, you know? We agree with that are worthy of being surface to the new generation. Are being serviced to a new generation. - I think whatever the Dover Brothers got going on, we just kind of follow their lead. That's just about it. But I will say that I can't help but think that there might be some Gen Z folks out there who their first exposure to Diana Ross was through a stranger thing. - That's probably true. - It kind of blows my mind. - Yeah. So Deala, when did you first hear upside down by Diana Ross? - I'm sure I heard the song as a kid. I definitely remember when it got sampled by MC Light in the late 90s with Rock the Party. ♪ The party that rocks the body ♪ ♪ You rock the party that rocks the body ♪ ♪ What's your status? ♪ ♪ I'll be the baddest, be the hit the scenes, Mr. Kate ♪ - But I really associate this song with being a DJ in my 20s. Because during that time, I really got into chic. Like I fell in love with chic. I grew to appreciate the musicality of Val Rogers and Bernard Edwards. It was just so good. And I bought all their music. Like all the albums, I just wanted to follow their entire legacy of music. - Absolutely. Why are we talking about chic so early? 'Cause this is basically a chic song with Diana Ross on top. - I agree. - At the end of the day, all the players and all of the recording and all of the performances and all of the arrangement and songwriting is Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson from The Bansheak. - Well, I have so many questions about them. We're gonna get into that. What about you, Luxury? What was the first time you heard this song? - I just remember as a kid hearing it and just being struck by all the Lee Rhymes and all kind of the Lee Rhymes words. Well, it's like instinctively, respectfully. But even I say to thee, like jumped out of the radio 'cause like no one was like using lyrics like that. They still aren't. Like that's like Shakespeare. The V was definitely like an unusual thing to hear on a pop song, right? So that harkens back to my youth. As does the disco-ish sounds I will grant you. We're gonna get into the disco or not, disco-ness of it. But the smooth, sophisticated sound was amazing sounding to my young ears. - And this was also like maybe the first time that we were really hearing her outside of like the songs of the Supremes. - Right. I think I probably heard her first Diana Ross not through the Supremes, but through this song being a huge hit. - Wow. - And then I was later like, oh my gosh, she was also in the Supremes. It sort of reminds me of the old joke about wait, Paul McCartney used to be in a band before Wings. (laughing) - And I think you're a big chic fan too. - Massive chic fan. - Yeah. - Absolutely massive. - I think the cool thing about this song it's almost like a super group. It's like Justin's working with David Powell. - It's a perfect analogy. Kevin Parker on top of a justice song. - Yeah. - It's Diana Ross on top of a chic song of its era. - Totally. - We're definitely gonna do another chic, you know, hopefully with now Roger's episode of One Song in the Future. So, and we've already done a Supremes episode. So this is very much a super group kind of collab episode. - The two of them coming together. - For those of you who don't know who we're raving about, chic was a disco band formed in New York in the early 70s by bassist Bernard Edwards and guitar player, now Roger's. If you don't know them by name, I guarantee you've heard a couple of their songs. They had huge hits in the late 70s. I'm talking about Lafrey. (upbeat music) Good times. (upbeat music) ♪ Feast on the ground ♪ - And our personal favorite, I want your love. ♪ Your love, I want your love ♪ - I really adore this song. Every song that Nile and Bernard write, every chic song always has, there's always one special harmonically rich moment that sort of comes from their jazz heritage. There's always one chord that just punches you right in the emotional guy. And I want your love. It's that I want your love. I need your love. - Love. - That moment is so, it gets me. It's so emotional. It's really beautiful. - It's so good. - In 1978, 1979, Sheikharat, the top of the charts, their kings of the world, the disco demolition moment hadn't quite happened yet. When it does happen, it devastates the band. It kind of ends their career. But fortunately, they started this side project of producing and working with other artists. And it really begins with Diana Ross. And in fact, they've been asked to work with the Rolling Stones in Bette Midler, but they turned them down before. They had already done work with Sister Sledge. We are family. ♪ We are family ♪ ♪ I got all my six pills with me ♪ - So many good songs. - Huge hit, a big 1979 song. But Diana Ross is the first time that they're working with superstars. And that was as a result of there being an executive at Motown named Suzanne DePasse, who's a big fan, big fan of the band and wanted to basically get them in a room and sort of launch this other aspect of the career, which would later lead to them working famously with David Bowie on Let's Dance, Madonna, unlike a virgin, and so many others, so many others. - That's interesting, let me say that, because on the other hand, Diana hadn't had a hit in quite some time. - She was in something of a slump in this moment. - Absolutely. I think her last hit was Love Hangover in 1976. Great song. - Does that classic thing with the slow intro, and then we go into the like six, six, six, six, this go part, I love that song. (upbeat music) Honestly, when we talk disco songs, I always say that in my head, if you say disco, and you, the song that always pops into my head, is the fast part of the hangover. - Love Hangover, yeah. In fact, I have a theory that Andy Cohen on "Watch What Happens," his theme song is supposed to sound like Love Hangover, but it's changed just enough. - Oh really? - I hadn't noticed that. - See if you agree with my theory. Here's the theme song to Andy Cohen's "Watch What Happens." - All right, listen. (upbeat music) - Oh, yeah, absolutely right. Well, it's simultaneously super generic, but I also now that he pointed it out. - Yeah, it does sound like Love Hangover. - They wrote sideways from that to your song. - It's in that song. - It's in that song. - It's not an interpolation, or interpolation. - It's not one of those. It's not one of those. - So when Nile and Bernard start working with Diana, they decided they wanted to interview her before they started writing the songs. And I love this story. What they learned from these interviews was that she was ready as an artist for change. She's ready to turn her career upside down. I'm not kidding, according to Nile, she literally used that phrase, which is basically how they got the song. - I love stories like, it's like Mark Ronson and Amy. - Totally. - Amy Winehouse, like just having a real conversation and then you're gonna rehab, I said, no. - Natural conversation, just like the idea pops out and it takes the other person to be able to hear, like, "Oh, that's good." You've got a song title there, yeah. And Jimmy Jamm, we had him on the show a couple years ago now. He tells a pretty similar story about working with Janet Jackson. They sat down together and just talked to you in a few firsts. - Yeah, they just started with like, "Just tell us about your life, where are you at?" And from that came so many of the songs from Control. - Control, yeah. Go back and listen to that. That's one of my favorite episodes we've got. - And the other big single from this record, by the way, I'm coming out. Nile tells a great story about how he was inspired. He tells a story, he says, he ducked into a bar when he was in New York. And let's not forget that Nile was big into drugs, like they talk about all the time in his book. - Such a good book. - Can we talk about that book? Let's freak. If you have the time. - Read a book, that is an awesome book. I read it from Cover to Cover. - No holds were barred. He talks about it in this moment. He was like going clubbing and drinking and drugging. And before we go any further, just a really quick caveat. Massive Sheik fans, both of us. Massive Nile Rogers fan. I have probably read or seen, besides the book, like 50 or 100 other interviews. He's told a lot of these stories many times. I have come to notice that they don't always comport with each other perfectly. For example, what was the name of the bar where he first saw a drug performer singing Diana Ross and dressed like Diana Ross? It might have been the gilded grape. It might have been Gigi's Barnum Room. It's unclear, but it was definitely a cool name. - Was it the 1979 pair? - I have no idea. - Because the grizzly pair, it was a-- - I love that name. - The grizzly pair. We used to do karaoke there when I lived in New York. - It's down in the village. - That was a great, great name. Well, it's not clear which actual club he was at, but while he was there, or maybe he was at all of these clubs, he saw a drug performer's dress like Diana Ross. He was a big part of the repertoire. And he realized that she was a gay icon. It wasn't something he was otherwise aware of. And he brought this idea into the writing sessions, wrote the song with Bernard, "I'm coming out." Didn't necessarily tell Diana about the gay connection, interestingly enough. In fact, it seems as though she was unaware when she was singing, "I'm coming out." She was.
singing a song about coming out. I've seen an interviewer Nile says that he kind of enjoyed. It appearing as though she was coming out in the song. I'm coming out. So he pitched it to her was, this is going to be your first song when you come on stage. Wow. Which is what came to pass into this day. I saw her play the Hollywood Bowl a few years ago. It was the first song. She was writing like a zip line or something onto the stage to I'm coming out. I got to say the thing I like and this isn't his book. The thing I like about Nile's approach to songwriting is that he always says there has to be this thing that he calls D.H.M. which is deeper hitting meaning or deep hidden meaning. And for every song like I'm coming out he was like I heard that phrase. And I was like that that needs to be that that needs to be the song. Yeah. I mean it's like another layer that you may or may not get it on first listen or for your whole life of listening. But if you're in the know. Yeah. Then you know that there's the secondary meaning to it. Yeah. He talks about that a lot. I've seen an interview where he talks. Yeah. The average radio listener not in New York in 1979 or not in the fashion circles in that era wouldn't have known that those were fashion brands. Totally. But for him it gave it a more sophisticated thing. So the New York crew. So the Andy Warhol crew that he was a little bit trying to impress would be like okay. These guys are hip. Absolutely. He throws out a little nugget. Yeah. That's you know that like a little wink lyrically to let you know I'm hip to this. Because you have to understand he's coming from this moment too where the disco demolition thing was he was concerned this was ending his career. There's a big reputational and career and money generating problem potentially. If the music is considered if he's considered untouchable as a producer because the music has fallen from favor. So it's interesting. He's sort of balancing writing huge pop hits but also throwing in little nuggets in there to indicate like I'm I'm I'm I'm still kind of on the cool art world sophisticated side of things. Absolutely. Why don't we hear a little bit of I'm coming out. Have you seen the friend armistone routine with the drummer? The drummer. He's like I still I can't I've memorized it. 52 seconds of intro. That's epic. That's epic. But I will say I love songs to do that. Love songs that like the drums come into the go away. Yeah. I'm thinking about a sequence by mom deep does the same thing like the drums come in but then they take them back out and you're like oh what have we got ourselves into and it's perfect for an intro song for an album or an album showing up on stage because that minute of extra tension. So that's that's kind of risky. It's so dope. It's so dope. I can I say my personal favorite on this album is my old piano. I love that song. Sort of like the song we're talking about today upside down. Something weird is going on with the drums like the drums don't come in on the one they they kind of come in. I want to sound them three. Let's listen and just and decide where they come in. And this song too I find has one hunt for me. It's the haunting sound of this one chord on whichever organ they're playing. I'm not even sure who's playing and who's playing one organ. But there's this one organ chord. Let's listen. But here comes the best part. That's so now Rodgers. It's such a wild song like it's these kind of like manic. Yeah, like in a way that I like. But it's an arrangement thing which is great foreshadowing for upside down because he does a similar thing with arrangement because the crazy part is interspersed. We start with the not crazy part. We start with the chorus which is just two chords basically. It gets us into the swing of things and then we go all over with those chord changes. Baby used to say all the instruments do their own things. So there's so much syncopation and so many interesting chords. And syncopation. It's so fun. Yeah. And Bernard Edwards is playing like he's playing in versions on the bass that he's not playing the roots and they're so satisfying when he's playing like the major third or the minor third. What they what these guys do with music is simultaneously sophisticated and pop in a magical way. That's part of the genius of Nile and Bernard. It's so great. All right. We're going to take a break. But when we get back for the first time ever, you're going to hear rare and unused takes for the queen of Motown herself Diana Ross. You don't want to miss this when we get back. You know today I was still a little rusty. I got it. I know the feeling. But I decided I'm going to upgrade my morning routine. Want to upgrade your morning routine? 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Right now trade is offering 50% off of one month trial at drinktrade.com slash one song. That's DR I N K T R A D E dot com slash one song to get 50% off one month drink trade dot com slash one song. Welcome back to one song. I can't wait to get into this dim so luxury hit me with the drums. Tony Thompson from chic one of our all time favorite drummers. Yeah man listen to him. Keep it simple and yet throw in some interesting little things that make it interesting. You can hear the music right? Yes playing the motifs. Here comes the motif right here. And you're right. That crash is on the three. The three's love this song. They never get to shine. That's a that is a big part of the motif too. Like there's all these little little like their hooks basically. They're non melodic non lyrical hooks parts of the song that are very distinctive and you can't wait for it to happen again. Yeah. It's recognizable. What was Thompson's background? Did he come from rock? It feels like he's like he feels drivey and like almost forceful and loud and like almost a rock way more than an R and B way. He and Nile and Bernard started out together in the big Apple band. But before that he was in La Belle. Oh, it was which was which was a little bit of a funk and rock and R and B hybrids. So totally had a bit in there. Yeah. Yeah you can hear it. And I will say even though this beat isn't for on the floor. Yeah. I feel like it's disco. You feel like it's not. I think this is we've had so many episodes where the question of what is genre and how do you define it? To me what makes this song disco is more contextual than musical. So as we break down the stems once they're starting with the drums, it's not a four to the floor drum. Totally. If you were first of all, if I said play a disco drum, 99% of drummers would go four to the floor, roughly 120 BPM and they might add a open high hat. That was at sort of like a ground zero for what might we get to show like there've been rock bands that you know essentially made you know disco songs because of how we hear the drums. Yeah. And this is that's right. Like an Aussie Aussie. Like Aussie. We did crazy trains. Yeah. Definitely disco drums but then everything on top not disco and definitely everything you know visual and contextual definitely not disco. But it's a drum that's more of a disco rhythm section. Crazy trains more of a disco song. I agree. In the drums then upside down. Easy top legs. Yeah. It's kind of a disco soul. I think we're saying the same thing because to me disco it's more of a feeling and a specific time. You know almost anything that came out in 79 has some disco element because I can see studio 54 and I can see the Hallston dresses and New York. I mean I you know I wasn't there obviously but I kind of wish I was and when you listen to certain songs like upside down it sort of like puts you in a time machine. Yeah. It's where you find them in the world and when you found them. So in studio 54 in New York 1980 they are playing this song. There's also there are musical elements that are disco but it's definitely not the drums. In the bass when we get to that moment I was surprised to notice a few things that I I thought were there that aren't there that would have made it disco. And last but not least I think the strings which we'll be hearing later. That's a way to get that's very disco strings are are amazing. So we'll big part of the genre. That's right. Well, let's continue with
the drums. So what we just heard was the chorus. We've been listening to a lot of sheet here in the studio today. And I'm realizing Nile and Bernard love to start with the chorus. Yeah. You know, that's not always a thing. But like it's, you know, the Beatles did it famously. Yeah. Sheep does it almost every song. They almost always start with a chorus and not the verse. And interestingly, you're right. And in this song, they do want, they take it one step further, which is the song actually starts with the outro. So the upside down, you know, turn of me, which is the entire minute and a minute and a half outro of the song. We hear a little tease of it at the beginning. Then we go to the chorus. It's a very interesting arrangement, which was very strategic because it hooks you right away to the hooky, hooky, hooky. So let's listen to the verse beat and it's even less disco than the chorus beat if that's possible. Check out the double snare hit in particular with a little bit of a syncopation in the open i hat. So right there, we got one and two ends. And then the open hat is on that, uh, of two, two end, uh, 16th note. So that's not a disco beat by any stretch of the imagination. That's funky as hell. It is his rhythm. Yeah. To do that, that much syncopation is insane. Yes. The man has so much rhythm. By the way, one thing I noticed in the stems, I'm done with the percussion per se. Uh-huh. In other words, there are no claps in this song. Oh, well, but I hear claps. So I feel like a clap song. We're going to discover what's making that sound a little bit later, but it is not happening with actual clapping or drum machines. It's 1980. So they wouldn't have had, you know, most of the clap, clap drum machines had invented. There were some, we won't go down that rabbit hole, but there are no claps coming from either of those percussion. Sorry. Yeah. It's coming from something else. I love how the bass locks in with the drums in this song. Can you, can we bring in a bit of the bass? Let's do it. I'll start with Nard, as Nile refers to him, Nard Bernard Edwards. I'll start with him isolated, and I'll bring in some of Tony on the drums. But here is low key. This is relatively low key Bernard Edwards. This is the chorus. And this is the funky as he gets. Or the most active, I should say. And then in the verse, it gets even more chill. He's just holding down that root. A little rhythmic quarter notes. I like it. You know, this is not the Bernard Edwards that I fall in love with. Let's face it. It's not the everybody does like 16 notes and like punctuating everything with octaves. Totally. I don't hear a single octave in the song. That's the thing I was alluding to that would have been Super Disco. You have your octave bass boom, gap, boom, gap, boom, gap, right? And Bernard does that on a lot of songs. There's not a single Bernard Edwards octave bass note in the song. I like this because on the verse where he's just playing that root, it makes a tense. You know what I mean? Like it goes up this tension so that by the time you get back to the chorus, there's a release. 100% agree. Yeah. There's chord changes are only happening in the chorus and the intro outro. The verse is one note, building tension, build, build, build, build, build, done, done, and then we go back to the chords that change every half bar. It's for a bar loop, for a chord loop that goes like that. Right. But in the verses, it's just like, what's going to happen? 10th, 10th, 10th, 10th. Yeah. So Bernard for the most part is really like maintaining a chill groove. He's not going crazy. Every now and then, he throws in something fun like an octave. He throws in an octave as a note, but not as a percussive boom, like a blowing a blowing gap. Here's one. That's it. He's just keeping himself interested by substituting the lower root for the higher root in that one. But we were saying that this is actually the type of playing the bass that he actually enjoyed to do. Right? So great time to tell this anecdote that I just learned what I loved. We eluded to the beginning of everybody dance, which is one of our collective favorites. So apparently Bernard hated this intro and it was Nile who convinced him to do it and to keep it on the record, but he was embarrassed by it because it is so busy, it is so show offy, and he did prefer to keep it relatively restrained. Go to the chill. And you know, what is the minimum number of notes I can play to accurately indicate what needs to happen here? Yeah. It's a little bit of the attitude, which is a sophisticated way of playing. So we've talked a lot about Nile. Nile is the guitarist in the band. So what is Nile doing on this song? So Nile Rogers, famously rhythmic guitar player. So there's a lot of rhythm happening in his parts. The keyboards are where a lot of the harmonic action is taking place and a lot of the rhythmic action. But let's just listen and then we'll talk about it. Just staccato. Staccato stabs. So he's playing the staccato stabs that mirror the chords. Yeah. He's actually relatively restrained. A lot of the exciting action of the song is taking place in the piano. In fact, arguably we're about to get to it, but that may be the unsung hero or one of the unsung heroes musically of the song. But he's also restrained. So both Nile and Bernard are kind of relatively restrained. That's the chorus. Even more restrained when we get to the verse. By the way, the change from the chorus to the verse is one of the exciting parts of the song that's very chic. We actually change keys here. It's a chromatic modulation from G, Dorian, maybe, to B flat seventh maybe. And it sounds like this. And then you'll hear what he plays, which is not a lot. Two, three, four, two, two, three, four. He just plays a two-bar chord and it's the same chord every time. A lot of restraints shown there because of my ears, because there's so many instruments on this song, it all sounds very busy and very full. But when you hear the individual parts, it's not quite what I thought it would be. It's actually kind of like you said, restrained and simple. It's restrained and simple. And the complexity is in the arrangement. And one of Nile's genius skills is arrangement/orchestration. Deciding what goes when and how all the different instruments. He's on a guitar. He's just like, "Hey, I'm going to show off right now." He's like, "This guitar is selling this. I want this bass right here. I want strings here. I want piano here." There's a lot of interesting use. They're kind of trading off to get to the ultimate bar of musical interest where things are taking place. They're sharing the space. So once we get into the piano in particular, you'll note how all of these pieces are, they're basically puzzle pieces that he's piecing together to create the final riff, the overall riff, which is not only happening on a single instrument. But that's not all that he's doing. Here is the answer to the question. Guys, for all these years, I've been hearing claps. Where are the claps in the song? And just for context, here's that same section. This is the chromatic modulation. This is going from the chorus into the verse. You don't even know it's interesting. You're like, "What's happening?" But you're changing keys in this moment. I'll give you with a few more instruments. [Music] And can I say to my ears, there's something that sounds odd about the time signature of this song, but I think it's what we were talking about earlier, right? It's the three. It's like they're coming in on the half bar. Yeah, there's two things. One is that crash happening. Da-da-da-da. Da-da-da. Down crash. One, two, three, four. Down, two, three, four. And then there's a second thing, which is there's a half bar. And we just heard where it happens. In the modulation, when we move from chorus to verse. Da-da-da-da-da. That's a half bar. I'll play it for you in the full song so you can hear. I'll count it out. Three. Four, two, three, four. One, two, one, two, three. Yeah. So there's a half bar that's added on the end. Totally. Yeah. And I will say as a DJ, that was very confusing. That made the song almost unmixable. You can't do internal mixing on that part of the song because it's going to go way off. At least it's not like five, four or something. It's still four, four or technically. Yeah. But yeah, you do have this half bar that is shocking. Totally. And it goes perfectly with the modulation. So it's a key change. It's a half bar. It's chromatic. Da-da-da-da-da-da. It's not a scale. Yeah. So it's all this interesting stuff. And then it goes away and we're back to pop music again. We leave jazz behind. But that's interesting because I was going to say we've been talking about is it's a disco song. If it's not disco. Yeah. What genre is this? Is it pop? Is it funk? I think it's more additive than subtractive. I think it's disco and it's disco plus. So it fits in a disco set. So you're with me now. This is a disco site. I think it's a non-reductive. Here's my political answer, right? I mean, I do feel like a politician saying let's be all things to all people all the time. No, for luxury. I think that there are disco elements. It makes sense in a disco club. In a disco DJ set, you won't get thrown out of the club if you're DJing and you play this. This is one of the biggest songs of the night. If you're listing the top hundred or ten disco songs of all time, it's likely to come up there. But musically speaking, where the disco lives, it's kind of here and there. Right? And it's not as explicitly disco as like "The Scat Brothers Walk the Night" or something like that. It's like hell, it is disco. Are the BDs for that part? Yeah. And by the way, here's the answer to the mystery from before. We all hear claps and upside down by Diana Ross, but there's no claps per se. That clapping sound is coming from now Roger is just chucking on the guitar. Right. And he did two passes, one left, one right, so it sounds stereo. I'll play them for you right now. I'll give you some context. And I'll put it in the
drums. I'll take out the rhythm. Yeah, there you go. So that's drums and chucks. And obviously, so this happens a lot on the show. The stems are before a lot of processing happens sometimes. I think there was some reverb added and maybe some high end to make it more clappy sounding, but that's the source of that sound. Oh, that's great. The piano is probably one of my favorite things in this song. I think the strings is going to be my favorite, but right now it's competing with the piano. You reserve the right to. Yes, I reserve the right to later say the strings of my favorite. What's the piano doing? I would totally agree with you. In fact, I would go so far to say as one of the unsung heroes of the song is the piano. And that means that I need to name the piano player. I'm not sure it's one. It's one of these classic like credits. Just list two names for all the songs and all the parts, but listed on the LP for keyboards are Raymond Jones and Andy Barrett, who sometimes goes by Andy Schwartz. There's a lot of pictures of Andy Barrett with pianos. So I think he might be the pianist on this one. And I think the Rhodes part, which we'll hear in a moment, might be Raymond Jones. Either way, this part is where like the heart of the like memorable motif riff action is taking place. And this is the part I'll play it for you then I'll keep babbling after. Let's just listen. That's it. That part right there. Ba-ba. Those two little syncopated ba-ba. Ba-ba. That's the hook. That's the flesh. That's the flesh. And neither Nile nor Bernard are playing that part. It's just the piano is left in that little space for that. Which I thought was that surprised me a little bit listening to the Sims. I just assumed that maybe they were doubling it or they were all kind of like. Totally. Playing with it. But they leave who have Andy Barrett Schwartz or Raymond Jones have his little moment with that boom. Ba-ba. Now that's on the chorus. Does it change in the verse? Actually in the verse. Kind of a bit of a hero as well. Let's listen from the chorus through the modulation. And unlike the restrained Nile and Bernard, there's some action going on here. We're getting higher. We're going to go up an octave. We have a little more action going on in the verse. And yeah, no, I think that those are like secret, secret sauce of the song might be happening in the piano. I really like that. Yeah. What's the Rhodes doing? The Rhodes is a little more restrained. But there's some little fun stuff in the verse as well. Here it is in the chorus. You hear the bleed from the headphones. Just doubling. And I'll bring the piano. Oh well, let's keep going. Bring in some drums. Bring in some guitar. You can barely hear the guitar. Bass. And here he is in the verse. Doing some fun stuff. Also rising in octave every time. One more time. So satisfying. Boom! You nailed it, man. I could have played Rose on this. Maybe you did. I'm not sure who did. I know. I could have been you. I asked for my name being taken off earlier. Rose always killed me. But I have to say I'm a fan of disco strings. Oh, well, you're in for a treat here. So hit me with some strings, baby. This may be the most interesting revelation in the stems. And I did a little homework afterwards, a little research, a little recreation. But let's start with what was actually recorded. Which you will notice, I'll compare it just to be clear, is different from what's on the final version. So here are the strings. And by the way, credit where do these are the chic strings consisting of Valerie Haywood, Cheryl Hong and Karen Milne. How fortunate that we actually have string player names. So rare that we know. But the same players that play on I Want Your Love and all the other chic songs are also playing on this. Let's listen to what they play. So that's it. It's an eight-quard loop. But now I'm going to play for you that same section that's the chorus of the final song. And listen for the strings. It's markedly different. I'll play it again because it's a little hard to hear. But like it starts out with the first because in what's recorded are eight, basically half note, like it's half the bar. So each chord gets done to, done to, done to, half a bar along. But it's just legato. And there's nothing rhythmic happening. They're just playing the interval, the two notes. But in the song, we hear the first one like that. And then it disappears. It gets muted. And then little fragments of it are kind of thrown in there. But they seem to be kind of like bouncing a little bit like a delay. I'll play one more time so you can listen. And then I'll do a little bit more of a micro adjustment to help you hear it. Like you can hear that duh, right? Like that one is distinct. Well, you know what's funny is I thought this strings were actually going to be doing something that would sound a lot more familiar. Yeah. Just because I'm realizing now this is really the difference between like a guy who plays the guitar in a rock band. Yeah. And a guy who has producer dreams because he is layered this in so many ways. Yeah. They're like, now I'm hearing what the pianos do with the rose doing with the, it all kind of comes together to form something that's not on any one instrument. I agree. That's what I was saying before about the puzzles fitting together. Totally. It reminds me a lot of George Benson's "Give Me the Night" where the riff overall is kind of interplaying. It's like the guitar does a thing and then the road answers into the strings. So across every bar or two bars with a duration of that riff, you're actually hearing five different sounds that piece together within your mind is just "Give Me the Night" duh, duh, duh, duh, duh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's actually like an interplay, a dynamic interplay between the instruments. And you're totally right. Same thing is happening here. Yeah. That piano does that one note. And then the rose does the thing. And then the strings does the thing. And all together, it's the riff. It's a classic example of something being more than the sum of its parts. Yes. Because when they come together, it just sounds amazing. And it's arrangement, stash, orchestration, genius. Totally. Yeah. There's something going on with those strings, right? Like I feel like there might be an effect or something. What's happening there? Yeah. So I did some digging and I think that there's two unsung heroes happening in just the strings alone. One of them might be Bob Clear Mountain engineer. And the other one might be the phenomenon of delay devices in the studio. So in this moment, Nile Rogers, one of the great guitar players of all time, gives full credit to Bob Clear Mountain for introducing him to some delay techniques. And he says that on everybody dance was one of the first times he learned he could do two things. So in everybody dance, there's a clav solo that's very rhythmic. Yeah. But actually the clav player was just playing whole notes and it didn't sound very funky. So Bob Clear Mountain, who's a tech guy who's like, you know what you can do? You can play guitar and I can key that. I can side-chain it basically. So whatever you play, you'll only hear that in the clav. Literally what you're hearing in everybody dance. Kind of like in Daft Punk when I was going to say a French touch. When the kick drum plays, then the bass ducks down under it and you have that woo woo woo sound. They're using both techniques on the strings in this song. One of them is the keying. So you hear a little wobble in the strings. When you hear that, it means that Nile was playing the rhythm he wanted those legato strings to go. So he's playing something rhythmically. You don't hear the guitar. You just hear what the rhythm does apply to the strings. The second thing he does and then this becomes a big Nile Rogers Bob Clear Mountain thing is actually using delay. And I'll show you what that means because it's much easier to hear than it is to explain it. So I'm going to play for you one more time what the strings were recorded to sound like. Here is what was not muted. So the set one is you mute everything but this. Muting. So first step was to mute the parts that you didn't hear but the second step is to add delay and now I'll show you what that does. Right here. So that is the magic trick that was used to give the rhythm aspect to the strings to give it some funk to give it some bounce and to have it fit in with those other parts. So I'll play that again with the piano and the guitar and you'll be like, oh yeah now I'm starting to hear what the song upside down sounds like. Right here. Right? It fits it right enough. So it fits right into that pocket just like we were talking about all the puzzle pieces coming together in the form. What that riff is being shared across different instruments. Little fragments of sound at a time. Like those are literally 16th notes in the strings. Kind of a magic trick in 1979-1980 to take a string part and do that. It almost sounds digital. Well it wouldn't be a Diana Rosson without
the queen herself Diana Ross. So let's dive into the vocals. You said earlier in the show something that I didn't really even realize the song kind of cheats the outro at the beginning of the song. It's true. We just got a little snippet. You want to hear that? Let's hear it. Let's start. That's Diana and it should be mentioned. Another group of unsung heroes is that she's not alone in the intro nor is she in the outro. She is accompanied by the chic vocalist basically. Yeah. So that's Alpha Anderson and Lucy Martin from chic along with Michelle Cobb who is also in chic sometimes and Fonzie Thornton Luther Vandross's childhood. Oh wow. Yeah, go back to that after we talk about Fonzie. So it's that group. You'll hear a little male vocal in the kind of I think higher tenor range actually. But here they go. The chic vocals and then I'll put them all together. Upside down you're turning me. You're giving love instinctively. Round and round you're turning me. So here's somebody I can really hear that male voice now. Yeah. That's Fonzie. Yeah. Let's listen to all of them with Diana again. That's that's the supreme center. That is the supreme center. That's her. And by the way, I found some really cool earlier takes of the same vocal. That's her final take. But it's really fun to listen to these early takes because she's trying to find what she wants to do. I think these are some of those unused takes that we were mentioning earlier. Yeah. Well, this one is my favorite. I'll play it for you and then we can talk about it. But it sounds like she's trying a different character. I think of her as like being an actress for this song. It could have been she could have been this role. That's it. It's trying to be tough or something. Yeah. Yeah. I think you're like a fun auntie. Yeah. Yeah. She's like 35 in this moment, right? And that kind of corresponds with the picture on the cover. Yeah. The picture on the cover. It's sort of like a sexy mature lady. Yeah. As opposed to like, you know, like in the supreme. It's like all this, you know, sort of like diamond dresses and stuff like that. But in this one, she's like, just got on a white t-shirt and some jeans. And when Motown in the supreme, it was meant to be like the youth for the youth. It's like the youth of today, the youthful sounds of today or something was not the Motown model and she's moving away from that and trying to be tough. That's what I hear. By the way, it should be noted. We mentioned all the chic vocalists. Diana asked for them to give her a guide track. So she ended up singing upside down to the chic vocalist to her background singers. They did the whole song. So she kind of bounced off something and that was unusual for her apparently. Yeah. I really like the sound of those background vocalists because I actually read somewhere where Fonzie, our friend Fonzie, was saying that what they gave to Diana was that staccatoed way of singing like that. Yeah, like totally. And it kind of goes with the chucking that Nile is doing on the guitar. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's also staccato and very deliberate. Each sound is very deliberately placed with strength and conviction. Absolutely. One more arrangement thing to Nile's credit, like as a genius arranger, you always kind of want to be from one part of the song to the next. Something stays the same, something changes. So we just had a lot of fast notes, a lot of eighth notes. Now we're about to go into the chorus and things are going to slow down in the vocals. Here they are. Notice now how in the chorus there's a lot of quarter notes and rests. And then we have our chromatic shifts and then we have in the verse where the music bed is one chord that stays stable. She can then contrast that with her melody is going to be faster now. So here's verse one. Instinctively you give to me the love that I need. I cherish the moments with you. Couple of things. I like how it's always like respectfully. I'm aware that like there's like there's this one, two that happens. But also until we really sat down and listen to the song, I didn't realize that she says you're cheating on me. Can we talk about the lyrics of the song a little bit like? She's not happy. It's not a great relationship. She's not happy. She knows what to be upside down. Yeah, this is a bad upside down. Not like upside down I'm in love. It's upside down like what the hell? Can we hear some more outtakes that didn't make the cut? Yeah, those are fun, right? All right, let's let's let's go back a little bit. Here's in the chorus. There's a first take that sounds like a first take to me because it sounds like when you haven't done the song yet and you're learning it, it's really chill and it's very charming. It's kind of tentative. It feels so vulnerable to me. She seems sort of shy. Yeah. It's sort of how I feel when I hear that. I also hear sexy. Yeah, you know, I really do. It's funny because I was trying to imagine this this era Diana in the studio singing this. Yeah, this is the Diana who's in the Wiz. It's not the Diana. You'll even see just a couple of years later singing, you know, missing you. So it's a really interesting era. Right. Oh, and it's not the Supremes. We'd go back in the Centaur Supremes episode. You keep me hanging on. Like that's a different day and all together, right? That's more of like a character. Yeah, there is a good word. Yeah, but this one is like, you know, it might be vulnerable. It might be sexy, but it's like more, it's more chill. More low key. Yeah. I also never noticed until you just said it about the speed. Yeah. How it changes like so it comes in fast. Yeah. And then it goes to the chorus and it slows down. Yeah. Then the verses fast again. This is basically some music math. You know, I'm not sure how much of it is intuitive and how much he's literally sitting down with graph paper and mapping it out. But you really could sort of put it on a grid. All of the different parameter choices like chords change frequently. Chords don't change frequently. Melody in the vocal is rhythmically complicated, but melodically simple. Like all of these parameters across the song are perfectly managed. So that we have contrast from one section to the next. We have contrast, sort of horizontally, whatever is going on here on the in the music side in the drums and bass is contrasted by what's happening in the vocal on top. Genius now. Genius. And then when we get to the end, he goes fast again. Can we hear the outro? Let's listen to the outro. This is one of those great episodes where we have post fade adlibs that have never been heard before. I don't mind that one. I don't buy the up and down. You're bound to turn me. This is super. This is super projection. And who am I to think that I can get in the brain of Diana Ross. But sometimes when you're doing your adlib take, when the song is done, you've got the core vocals you need. But you're doing one last pass through the whole song, just whatever comes into your head, whatever there are gaps that you notice. Sometimes it could be stressful to be like, I'm not sure what to say. Because you've got to pick your lyrics. Am I going to just use the lyrics that I already know? Or am I going to add something new? That's what I'm talking about. And then you have to decide what notes. So I kind of hear a little bit. I'm projecting again. I hear her being like, I'm not sure what else to say besides the lyrics of the song. And she's sort of just singing the same notes in the same lyrics, but just little placing them differently. But she's yeah, but she's like having fun. I think it's having so much the kato going on in the song. Like I think she's just like, you know, she's doing a bunch of syncopated freestyling essentially. She's been down and around, like you're turning me. It's like you see the footage of like Judd Apatow movies where they're like where they're, he's like curling ideas. Yeah. Until like riff on for Seth, Seth Rogen, it turns out that some of those are actually adlibs that Paul Redd and whoever are coming up with. But a lot of them are like ideas that it's helpful to have coming from. Listen, when we're on set, we always have a couple of the writers there to pitch jokes in between takes. And you know, the it's a problem in its own game. That's its own brain. I'm sure that I do not have. This is one of those fun things too with the stems that you hear. This is a real band. The song fades out on the radio. But we have how the band stopped playing. You've never heard this before. It's so fun. Because you hear a band stopping performing together. Yeah. And here it is. Here's the real ending of upside down one song exclusive. It's so fun. That is so real. That's a bad way I could mess the sample way in the ham in that little little guitar that he did at the very end. You like that? I mean, these are guys that have been playing together at this point for, you know, maybe a decade, close to a decade. Yeah, Tony Thompson, Bernard Edwards, now Rogers just having fun in the studio. And it's so good. Yeah. So we have to mention that the version of the song that everyone knows isn't actually now Rogers and Bernard Edwards's original mix. Motown thought their mix pushed Iana's vocals too far back. So the label stepped in and remixed it. And now it's been very open about the fact he was devastated when he heard the Motown version because he felt it didn't reflect their artistic intention. I'll be honest. I've listened to these a couple of years back. I couldn't really hear that much of a difference. The differences are really subtle. Yeah. I can let's play some back to back and see if we can, if we can spot it. Let's do that. And you're absolutely right. And I was not having November and I'm not happy. The way I've heard him talk about it. There were lawsuits. There were threats to take his name off the record because he was so unhappy with it to an Alan Smithy version of Diana. Alan Smithy being the name that directors use when they don't let their name on the movie. I'm happy with when they don't have Final Kai. Exactly. All right. Well, here's a section that I think reflects some of the changes. Here is the final mix and then I'll play the chic version afterwards.
So here's that same section, and this is the rejected chic mix by Nile and Bernard. And I'll just something to listen for. I don't. I still don't hear the difference. I'm looking for it. I'll tell you something to listen for that I hear. There's more bass. Okay. There's less guitar interestingly. There's more strings. And this next thing you'll notice in a different section even more. But there's a lot more reverb on Diana's vocals. Okay. So there are a little more berry and chic version, which is important because what Diana wanted, she felt that the instrumentation was drowning her out and it wasn't clear enough. Her vocal wasn't clear enough. In part, that could be a mix volume thing. But I also think when you add reverb to a vocal, it tends to drown it out a little bit. That was going to say. The one thing that I thought that I noticed was that the vocals sound a little different. Yeah. That's what I'm hearing. To my ears, I'm hearing more reverb on the vocals, more bass, less guitar, more strings. Let's listen again. Here's the final version, a little brighter, less bass, more guitar, less strings. Not no reverb on the vocal, but less. No, but less. Yeah. And here's the chic version of that same part. It's subtle, but you know what, now that I'm listening for it, it's almost like Motown wanted Diana to say, hey guys, it's a disco, a fun genre. That's what I'm getting from those vocals now. For sure. And on the chic version, it's like Diana's actually singing a disco song. It's interesting, though, because one of the changes that I noticed is that the guitar is actually louder in the non-nail Rodgers version, like he had his guitar lower in the mix. I'm telling you, he's not, you know, for a long time, he's like, you didn't even know what chic looked like. You know, they wouldn't. Yeah. But they would kind of go out their way to like, that's right, be background player. Yeah, it's yeah. I'll give you one more section to listen for where I hear the guitar a lot louder. And then that same section, this is Niall's version. It's super subtle, but Niall was very unhappy. I like the idea of the record label feeling like this mix is going to tinker. Yeah. They were worried. Like, they tasted like a five to a six. Yeah. This stuff mattered, obviously, a lot. Yeah. I think it was Bob Clear Mountain, who may have done the original mix. Russ Tirana was brought in. He was Motown's original engineer from the 60s. So Diana had worked with him in the Supremes. The two of them sat over the tapes and she gets a co-production credit, co-mixing credit. And, you know, ultimately, the final mix is the Russ Tirana and Diana Ross mix. Yeah. I said, quote, we didn't want the public to assume that these were our mixes. That's why he had their names taken off. The basic problem was that we had two different concepts of what her voice should sound like. So it sounds like the voice was kind of the key area of difference between different mixes. Yeah. So it's very subtle, like I said, more reverb in one than the other, but to the average listener. Yeah. I don't know that the public would have noticed. I think you're right. Yeah. All right, Luxury. So now that we've heard this song, tell us how the splits break down. This song was 100% written by Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards who split a 50/50 between the two of them. Yeah. I love to hear a good 50/50 story. Yeah. All right, D'Aloh. What is the legacy of Upside Down by Diana Ross? You know, I don't think it can be overstated enough that this song really revitalized her career. The global success of Upside Down really introduced her to a whole new audience and era as she continued to make music throughout the 80s. That's right. The 80s, less fading 60s phenomenon, and more just a new kind of a new star in a way to a new generation. Totally. And Michael Jackson and her had this great collab, which is one of my favorite unsung Diana Ross songs. You know the song Muscles? It's such a weird song. It's a crazy song. It's a Michael Jackson production and co-write. Yeah. Or I think he wrote it fully, I should say. I think you did. Yeah. And the video is unhinged. Can we play a little snippet? How are they doing that? I want myself. That's Michael. For those who are not fortunate enough to see what we're watching, a lot of muscles, a lot of men, a lot of oil on muscles and oil blowing them away. I think they're like walking on her arm. Oh, the F-X, really. Special effects for the 80s. Over the top. This five years after Star Wars, by the way. It's not like they couldn't do more. No, this was clearly Lucasfilm's finest work. What I will say is that I didn't know this was even a song until my co-star, Marlon Essence Ackens, was telling me how much she loved this song "Muscles" and I was like, "Muscles?" And she was like, "Oh, you don't know this song." So there is an underground of muscle fans out there. You like this song too? I love this song. Before I brought it up, I couldn't have this episode be completed without bringing up muscles and listening to muscles and watching the video from us. I'm doing the episode unless I get a shout out to muscles. What do you think the legacy of Upside Down is? I think from the Diana Ross perspective, we have a lot of thoughts that we've just shared. But I think that it's no small shakes that Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards also go into the 80s with kind of new wind beneath their wings because the end of disco demolition was the end of Sheik's career, but not the end of their career. As mentioned, we have David Bowie, we have Madonna, we have Durand-Durand, and all these incredible iconic songs. Yeah, they did notorious. They didn't know notorious and wild boys. And to this day, Nile Rogers is out there 40 years later, his career going strong. Yeah, he was on, you know, the "Dapunk" song from "Gun's Right," he was on "Gun's Right." He was on "Gun's Right." Lucky, let's not forget. Exactly. And Bernard went on to produce for "Air Supply" and "Rod Stewart" and "Jody Wattley." Ooh, let's not forget "Power Station," one of my favorite productions. I love that record. Bernard, such a gifted, talented individual. Unfortunately, he struggled with addiction pretty much to his entire career. He died way too soon. But Diana still around, you know, she's 81. She just performed this song for New Year's Eve because this song has had a whole new, you know, like it's actually back on the charts. Yeah. So I guess this is just going to be another decade where Diana continues to entertain us. Okay, Luxury. It's time for one more song. It's the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you, the one song nation, with each other. You go first. All right. Well, for my KCRW show, I'm doing "Post Punk," and I'm going down some wonderful rabbit holes. As much as I thought I knew a lot about genre X and the main practitioners, I'm always finding something new. This week is no exception. My new discovery of the week is an old band from them '80s. This is a German band called "X-Malt Deutschland." The song is polar licht. It does everything I love. I literally thought it was like a cocktail twins record I'd never heard before. So I love it. It's got the light. What year is this? It's like, I think 1984, polar licht. I guess that means polar, like, you know, the light of the North Pole or something like that. I'm not really sure. My German is not that good. But they look exactly like you told them to look like five members of some cross between the cure and the damned, and it's four women and one man. And X-Malt Deutschland is the name of the band, X with an X. I love that. What about you, Diallo? What is your one more song this week? My one more song comes from our listeners, actually, because I've had a couple of people who asked me if we're going to cover a song called "Deeper Shade of Soul" by Urban Dan Squad, and I think it's such a funny song because for so long I've tried to think to myself, like, what is this? Is this like, is this Gateboard rap? What is a genre of the song? Let's listen to it real quick. That's the one. What is the genre? I have an answer for you. The genre is 1990. Because that's the only moment that music sounded exactly like that. I will say, you know, it's easy to laugh at a song like this, because it's so like, I don't know, it's like weirdly '90s-Earnest. Yeah, it's so earnest. But the hip hop in the pop, you say-- It was the hip hop. I think they're white. Are they black? Are they? There's like a black eye. Are they Dutch, though? I think they're, are they not Dutch? Yeah, they're Dutch. That explains so much. Yes, it does. By the way, they need Urban Dan Squad, it sounds like a faith-based dance. There's a translation thing happening here. They're singing in English, but they're, they're Dutch. Yeah. So it does that sort of like, it's a little bit of the Austin powers, you know, thing where like the Dutch stuff is English, but a little bit different from--I don't want to say off. I'm trying to avoid saying off. But it's a little off. Oh, it's fair. I mean, I have some thoughts on it, because by 1989, when the song comes out, we now are deeper, we are deeply, we are deeper, we are deeply into the decade. And we've had enough time for hip hop and electronic music to both simultaneously start using samples. In different ways. From the, on the new order, into Pesh Mode side, and on the Frankie Goes to Hollywood side, we have these new tools. We're using samples. And the hybrids are starting to be fast and furious, where now we're, now the electronic or the pop side of it is adding back a layer of, of, of hip hop with the wrapping, if you can call it down to the song. And the use of the sample is kind of marrying both worlds, I would say, which happened in this moment where we have like electronic folding in some of the hip hop that had been happening. Right. I mean, it's, it's kind of funny because this group is Dutch, and I thought they were from California based on the
music video. But I do feel like there was a genre in the 90s and we covered one of these songs on a do like groups in the heart. It's like it is that collage of a bunch of samples. Yeah. And there's usually like hip hop, like, you know, Q-tip wraps on, you know, groups in the heart. Yeah. This guy's got it right. It also reminds me of like, there's a song called Standing Outside of Broken Foam Booth with money in my hand by Primitive Radio Guides, which is another one of these. It's the one that I've been down harder, baby. Like, you know, even woke up this morning, got myself a gun. You know, like, there was just a type of non hip hop sample based music. It's what I'm talking about. It's like coming from more of a band or electronic side, but they're integrating new technologies and capabilities and sounds that are definitely being pioneered in hip hop. Yeah. But it's not, the result is not hip hop. Even if there's wrapping on top, that's not it. It's not electronic either. I wish there was a name for it. It's 1989, 1990, 1990. That was the moment this was all happening. And by the way, since I've known this song forever, but there wasn't Who Sampled back in the day, I literally have this on vinyl. I get to now go on Who Sampled and find that this is the source. It's a deeper shade of soul by Ray Barretto from 1968. Oh, it's kind of Latin and it's all sick. God bless Who Sampled. If we only we'd have that back in the day, that was a fun, that was a fun little dive. That was a fun little dive. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram @Diallo and on TikTok @DialloRill. And you can find me on Instagram @LUXXURY and on TikTok @LuxuryXX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok @OnceOnPodcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Just search for One Song Podcast. We'd love it if you'd like and subscribe. And if you made it this far, you're officially part of the One Song Nation. So, so, love, give us five stars, leave a review and send this episode to a fellow music fan to help keep the show going. Luxury helped me in this thing. I'm producer DJ, songwriter, musicologist, and every Friday from 10 p.m. to midnight. KCRW DJ Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ DialloRiddle. And this is One Song. We'll see you next time. This episode was produced by Melissa Dwayneas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson, mixing by Michael Harman and engineering by Eric Hicks. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Gettings, Eric Wilde, and Leslie Guam.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
"Upside Down" by Diana Ross is a collaborative masterpiece produced by Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards of Chic, blending their jazz-influenced arrangements with disco rhythms and pop sensibilities.
The song was inspired by a conversation with Diana Ross, who expressed a desire to "turn her career upside down," leading to the title and thematic core of the track.
Nile Rogers incorporated a hidden layer of meaning—specifically, a gay identity reference in "I'm coming out"—without explicitly telling Diana, adding depth and a layer of personal significance.
The song features intricate, restrained arrangements with syncopated rhythms, unusual time signatures, and a half-bar chromatic modulation that create a dynamic, tension-building structure.
The piano, strings, and guitar work in interlocking, puzzle-like fashion, with the strings enhanced by delay effects and keying techniques to create a rich, evolving texture.
Diana Ross is not solo in vocals; Chic’s backing singers—including Fonzie and Lucy Martin—provide a staccato, rhythmic counterpoint that gives the song its distinctive groove.
A major controversy arose when Motown remixed the original version, pushing Diana’s vocals back and adding reverb, which Nile and Bernard felt misrepresented their artistic intent.
The song revitalized Diana Ross’s career in the late 1970s, introducing her to a new generation and setting the stage for future collaborations, including with Michael Jackson on "Billie Jean" and "Muscles."
Summary:
"Upside Down" by Diana Ross is a landmark fusion of disco, jazz, and soul, produced by Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards of Chic. The song emerged from a deep conversation with Ross, who expressed a desire to reinvent her career—resulting in the title and a bold, emotional theme. Rogers and Edwards crafted a complex yet accessible arrangement with syncopated rhythms, unexpected time signatures, and a chromatic modulation that builds tension and releases it in dramatic shifts.
The music features a masterful interplay between instruments: the piano’s hook, the Rhodes, and the strings—enhanced with delay and keying techniques—create a layered, dynamic texture. Diana Ross’s vocals are supported by Chic’s staccato backing singers, adding rhythmic energy and depth. A significant point of contention arose when Motown remixed the track, moving Diana’s vocals into the background with added reverb, which the producers felt diluted their vision.
Despite this, the song became a career revival for Ross, introducing her to a new generation and inspiring future collaborations, including with Michael Jackson. The track stands as a testament to creative collaboration, genre blending, and the power of hidden meaning in pop music.
FAQs
The song revitalized Diana Ross's career, introducing her to a new generation of audiences and marking a major comeback after a period of decline. It helped establish her as a relevant artist in the 1980s.
The song was written by Nile Rogers and Bernard Edwards, renowned producers and members of the disco band Chic. They combined their musical expertise to create a rich, sophisticated sound that became a defining feature of the track.
While it has strong disco elements like rhythm and arrangement, it's more accurately described as 'disco-plus'—a blend of disco with funk and jazz influences. Its genre-defying sound makes it a unique example of disco evolution.
The title comes from Diana Ross's own words during interviews, where she said she was ready to 'turn her career upside down.' This phrase directly inspired the song's title and thematic direction.
The lyric was inspired by Nile Rogers' exposure to a gay drag performer dressed as Diana Ross. Though Diana Ross wasn’t aware of the reference at the time, the line carries a deeper, hidden meaning about identity and self-discovery.
Motown's final mix pushed Diana Ross's vocals too far back, which upset Rogers and Edwards. They felt it didn't reflect their artistic vision, leading to a dispute and eventual replacement with a version co-mixed by Diana and Russ Tirana.
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