200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time

Shannon, ‘Let the Music Play’ (1983) – #6

When Shannon Green, an opera-trained vocalist from Washington, D.C., who had fronted a jazz combo in the late Seventies, first heard “Let the Music Play,” she said: “The first demo tape of it that producer Mark Liggett played me was very different. The singing was the pits! In the studio I just tried to be creative and put my own feelings and ad-libs over the music, which I could tell was smokin’ hot.” Shannon made it even hotter. A classic romance-on-the-dance-floor narrative, “Let the Music Play” was the breakout hit for freestyle, the largely Latino-driven cross between disco, R&B, and hip-hop. Producers Liggett and Chris Barbosa made a state-of-the-art groove using Roland’s TR-808 drum machine and the TB-303 bass synthesizer (minus the “acid” filtering). And the song’s near-instant leap from club hit to radio favorite — it went Top 10 pop — announced that dance music, and pop, had entered a new era.–M.M.

Source: Rolling Stone