Grace Jones' Nightclubbing (1981) album turns 45

 

“Grace Jones’ Nightclubbing album was the hippest record of 1981 … a reinvention of Roxy Music’s too-much-too-soon ennui, with sublime reggae and funk rhythms from the rhythm section of the era, Jamaica’s Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare … Grace Jones, an intimidatingly androgynous and Amazonian New York model – born in Jamaica … looked like a sleek, purpose-built alien, and spoke-sang her lyrics with a  dominatrix-like authority, developing and transcending her early career as a gay-scene disco diva …”

/ From the 2002 book This is Uncool: The 500 Greatest Singles Since Punk and Disco by Gary Mulholland /

Released 45 years ago today (11 May 1981) by Island Records: Nightclubbing, the fifth studio album by everyone’s favourite post-punk freak diva / Afro-Dietrich / futuristic dominatrix from outer space Miss Grace Jones! Nightclubbing is the second (and most commercially successful) entry in the fierce fashion model-turned-New Wave chanteuse’s timeless bleeding-edge trilogy of albums recorded at Chris Blackwell’s Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas (the other two are Warm Leatherette (1980) and Living My Life (1982). All three are essential!). 

The title track of course is courtesy of Iggy Pop’s 1977 The Idiot album. “Jones’ skill as a facilitator as well as pop cultural icon is exposed in the way the original song is converted from Krautrock-damaged, Suicide-aping sleaze fest into sophisticated, lightly-dub inflected, disco reggae,” criticJohn Doran argues. “The conceptual joke of the song is clear: Grace doesn’t hang around in the same horrible dives as Mr James Osterberg, but you can be sure that the experience is just as existential and soul-draining. She has just applied Pop’s lyrics to the cocaine-and-champagne instead of amphetamine-and-vodka lifestyle.” 

I love the dramatic accordion-laced “I’ve Seen That Face Before (Libertango)”, “Walking in the Rain” and “Demolition Man” but understandably most people remember Nightclubbing as the album featuring eternal dancefloor favourite “Pull Up to the Bumper”! I’d also argue that the confrontational cover image (a “painted photograph” entitled “Blue-Black in Black on Brown” by Jean-Paul Goude, Jones’ then-lover and artistic collaborator) is as impactful as Robert Mapplethorpe’s shot of Patti Smith on the cover of Horses.

/ Grace Jones photographed by Rob Verhorst onstage at the Carre Theatre in Amsterdam, September 1981 / 

Further reading:

Read my notes on Grace Jones’ concert at Royal Albert Hall in 2010 here. 

Read about Grace Jones' memorable book signing in London in 2015 here. 

Read my reflections on Grace Jones' Warm Leatherette (1980) album here.