The greatest lyric ever written, according to Nile Rodgers: “It reminds me of James Joyce”
From “I’m an alligator, I’m a mama-papa coming for you,” to “I don’t believe in an interventionist God, but I know, darling, that you do,” not every great song needs a great opening lyric, but usually every great opening lyric leads to a great song.
So, it’s not immediately straightforward to see how a song that opens as follows, “Hot pants, hey hot pants uh! Smokin’ / Hot pants, smokin’ that, hot pants,” could go on to contain the lyric that Nile Rodgers considers the greatest ever written.
This is a man who has played his white Fender on so many hits that it is considered the most heard single instrument in history. From ‘Let’s Dance’ to ‘Like a Virgin’ and ‘I’m Coming Out’ to ‘Notorious’, Rodgers’ signature disco sound has graced so many classics that it’s believed the hitmaker has played on over $2billion of hits.
All the while, he’s never been able to get the simple ingenuity of one line from ‘Hot Pants’ out of his head. James Brown sings, “Thinking of losing that funky feeling? Don’t,” and it hits like a cheesburger after an unfulfilling Michelin Star restaurant. It’s soulful, to the point, and better than all of its bothersome peers.
‘Hot Pants’ might not necessarily be Brown’s finest work, but because of this line, it remains the one song Rodgers would love to add to his bloated repertoire. “I so wish I had written every song I love,” he told NME.
Adding, “Every one of Beethoven’s symphonies. Mozart. Sergei Prokofiev, the lot. And whenever I think about lyrics, I think there’s no better lyric in the world than ‘Thinking of losing that funky feeling? Don’t’. It reminds me of James Joyce.”
While Joycean scholars have never cast their eye over ‘Hot Pants’, when they do they might conclude that Brown’s admonition constitutes a micro-epiphany, a Joyce-like moment in which the entire human condition is compressed into a funk command in three simple beats. It is, in effect, an extension of Joyce’s interior monologue technique, minus the interior, the monologue, and Joyce.
In truth, and all jokes aside, it’s better than Joyce’s mad ramblings. Brown offers up meta existential resolve in a funk song with the flurry of a single syllable: Don’t. In 1971, Brown was funkin’ them just to see the look on their faces, and Rodgers was deeply inspired.
Soon enough, that don’t would become the punk-adjacent revolt of disco, and Rodgers would stay true to the gun-barrel straight resolve of never even thinking about losing his funk for a hot second. The song itself: not the best, a little too grunting in the delivery and monotone in the melody, but it’s worth hanging around just to hear Brown mutter the purpose of life.
