Nile Rodgers on his favourite sad song: “I’ve cried every time”
There aren’t many absolute masters of music left, but Nile Rodgers is one of them. Whilst he is inextricably tied to the disco genre for the era-defining gravity of his efforts alongside Chic partner Bernard Edwards, Rodgers is much more than this rather one-dimensional character. Of course, he’s written many classic disco tracks, often underpinned by the funky chops of his Fender Stratocaster, but his reach extends far beyond one singular genre.
As well as taking disco to the masses, Rodgers also inspired one of Queen’s biggest hits, helped Diana Ross go solo, gave David Bowie a mainstream leg-up, and collaborated with a host of other prominent names, including Mick Jagger, Jeff Beck, Grace Jones and Daft Punk. Nile Rodgers is not just a musician; he’s a guitar hero, production wizard and, ultimately, an artistic visionary.
The New Yorker has made it clear in his time that he’s a lover of music in almost all genres, ranging from the searing psychedelia of his years as a teenage hippie in the 1960s to contemporary pop. Possessing a profound understanding of how music can connect with personal experiences, Rodgers’ accounts of his favourite music stand out as some of the most enlightening out there.
Fusing intellect with experience and a touch of the natural understanding of art that’s fuelled everything he has created, one of Rodgers’ most profound accounts of music came during an interview with Shortlist in 2014. There, he created his ‘Ultimate Playlist’ and at, one point, revealed the name of his favourite sad song. It is the live version of Luther Vandross’ cover of Burt Bacharach’s ‘A House Is Not a Home’. The track impacts the Chic leader so much that it makes him “cry and emote”.
Rodgers said: “Wow, there’s a million of em, but I have to say – when I say sad, it means something that makes me cry, so not just something that makes me think, but something that actually makes me cry and emote – and it would be Luther Vandross singing live, the Burt Bacharach song, ‘A House Is Not a Home’.”
He continued: “Every single time I’ve seen him do it – which is at least 20 – I’ve cried every time, and the very last time I saw him do it, shortly before his death, I actually even said to him backstage, I said, ‘Tonight is gonna be the first time I don’t cry’, and I cried. It’s only the live version, I’m not sure I feel the same way about the recorded version, but it’s the live version – every time he sings it live.”
Listen to Luther Vandross sing ‘A House Is Not a Home’ below.
