Tongue In Chic

Album Review

None of the albums that Chic recorded from 1980 to 1983 can be called essential, and none of them are in a class with C'est Chic or Risqué. Even so, they were generally respectable, and they didn't deserve to be ignored. When Tongue in Chic came out in 1982, the only people who were still buying Chic's albums were its most diehard fans. Black radio no longer seemed to be interested, which is ironic because the R&B charts of the early '80s were full of Chic-influenced groups (Change, High Fashion, Fantasy, among many others). Although Tongue In Chic isn't among the group's best albums and didn't contain any radio hits, it isn't a bad album either. "Hangin'," "Chic (Everybody Say)," and "I Feel Your Love Comin' On," demonstrated that Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were still quite capable of providing infectious R&B/funk grooves, and "City Lights" almost sounds like an example of early house music — which isn't all that surprising when you consider that Marshall Jefferson and many other house icons were major Chic fans.