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McFadden & Whitehead - Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now (1979)
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So far, a lot of the videos of disco songs I have put up have actually been funk or funk fused with disco, new wave or synth pop fused with disco, Europop mixed with disco, jazz fused with disco, hard rock fused with disco, and so on. Very few videos thus far have been true disco and they are only three: More, More, More by Andrea True Connection (1976), I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor (1979), and Come To Me by France Joli (1979). I would put two of these, Andrea True and France Joli, in my personal Top Ten favorite true disco songs of all time. 1979 saw a lot of disco, but not much that was not fused with some other form. By the late 70's the hallmark of many of the real disco songs was a string or orchestral backing, often with female backup singers, popularized by groups like The Salsoul Orchestra. Ain't No Stopping Us Now, I am not kidding, THIS was my favorite disco song of 1979 ... it NEVER got any better than this and I never saw two singers I enjoyed more watching perform. They were also one of the last of the artists associated with the Philadelphia sound that brought us so many great songs in the early and middle 1970s. The duo wrote many songs and one of them, Back Stabbers, became a big hit in 1972 by The O'Jays.

This was a very difficult synchronization, by the way. McFadden and Whitehead performed this song LIVE on BBC's Tops Of The Pops ... and did NOT lip sync to the original track like many artists of the day did. You can see the BBC studio orchestra being conducted and playing live at the beginning along with four female backup singers. McFadden and Whitehead varied their speed and presentation a lot in the first half and here and there you will see a few EXTRA words they threw in you don't hear on the original hit track. But 100% of this sync is right on the beat and, man, is it ever powerful to watch these guys match and move with the original song. If you want to hear what the live version sounds like you can check it out on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QFtd_C-BsI . Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now marked one of the highest emotional peaks for disco in the summer of 1979. At least, I always thought so. Surprisingly, it only reached #13 on Billboard's Hot 100 on July 14, 1979, although it was #1 on Billboard's Hot R&B chart and #10 on the Hot Dance Club Songs chart. On Cash Box it peaked at #12 on July 21, 1979 for two weeks. It scored higher than on the two main US charts in Ireland (#9) and in the UK (#5).

Sadly, neither singer is alive and with us today. in May 2004, Whitehead was shot to death at age 55 in a drive-by while someone was helping him repair his SUV and in January the following year, McFadden succumbed to liver and lung cancer at age 57.
Category
Disco
Tags
70's, Oldies, Retro, Pop, Live performance, Synchronization, Disco, Funk
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