After the Dance (song)
| "After the Dance" | |
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| Song |
"After the Dance" is a slow jam recorded by singer Marvin Gaye and released as the second single off Gaye's hit album I Want You (1976). Though it received modest success, the song was one of Marvin's best ballads and served as part of the template for quiet storm and urban contemporary ballads that came afterwards.
Overview
Written by Marvin Gaye and his co-producer Leon Ware, the song narrates a moment where the author noticed a woman on Soul Train and convinces the girl to "get together" after the two shared a dance. Throughout the entire I Want You album, which was dedicated to Marvin's live-in lover Janis Hunter (who wrote a 2015 memoir entitled After the Dance: My Life with Marvin Gaye),[1] the narrator — Gaye — brings up the dance concept in songs such as "Since I Had You". The song also served in a funky instrumental, which included a synthesizer solo performed by Marvin, who also played piano on the song and the entire album itself.
The single came out on the strength of its success as a double-A side on the Billboard Club Songs chart, where it had peaked at number 10 alongside the album's hit title track. The song was Marvin's lowest-peaked pop single for the first time in 13 years since the B-side of his "Can I Get a Witness" titled "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby", peaking at number 74, ironically three places higher than "I'm Crazy 'Bout My Baby", while it was a bigger success on the R&B chart, peaking at number 14.
Samples and interpolations
The song has since been covered by a legion of jazz vocalists and groups including Fourplay, who covered it with longtime Gaye admirer, R&B singer El DeBarge, in 1991. Their version was released as a single that year and re-introduced newer listeners to Gaye's original. Hall & Oates covered the song on their 2004 album Our Kind of Soul.[2]
During her "Girlie Show" concert in 1993, Madonna used the opening lyric of the song — "Dance with me/c'mon, dance with me, baby" — while performing "Everybody". "After the Dance" was also sampled by De La Soul on the track "With Me" from their 2000 album Art Official Intelligence: Mosaic Thump, and by Nas on the track "Play On Playa" from his 2006 album Hip Hop is Dead.[3]
References
- ^ Lary Wallace, "Marvin’s Muse", Los Angeles Review of Books, September 18, 2015.
- ^ "After the Dance" at SecondHandSongs.
- ^ "After the Dance" at WhoSampled.com.
External links
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