What You Gonna Do?

74. THELMA HOUSTON, "Don't Leave Me This Way"
Produced by Hal Davis; written by Kenny Gamble, Cary Gilbert, & Leon Huff
Tamla 54278 1977 Billboard: # 1

Some might say that all disco anthems were the same. If that was true--and I'm not sure it was--then this song was the epitome of disco anthems, somewhere between the early rousing pathos of "Touch Me in the Morning" and the heedless empowerment of "I Will Survive" (both of which I will be getting to later on in the thousand). Houston sounds so frail and wounded at the beginning of this record, soulful but hurting; much more convincingly abject than Gloria Gaynor ever could sound. But she picks up steam with the arrangement, to the point where, a minute or two in, she starts challenging her interlocutor and calling him out, almost calling him chicken the way Shannon would in "Let the Music Play" and Madonna in "Into the Groove" a few years on. Some of the credit has to go to the incredible pop pedigree behind the record (Davis, Gamble, Huff, et al), but much of it goes to Houston herself. Like many other successful records in its genre, this one demonstrates that, in its prime, disco was only a latin hustle away from the high drama of musical theatre.