The fans come for the old hits, but Diana Ross still wants to be relevant today

Rarely has there been a greater pop legend to attend the North Sea Jazz Festival than singer Diana Ross. The festival has featured stars like Little Richard, Prince, Sly Stone and Lionel Richie, but is there a bigger star than Diana Ross? Beyoncé, Adele and Tina Turner come close, but can’t match the number of hits that the now 78-year-old Ross has scored.

In the 1960s she sang in the Motown hit machine The Supremes, from 1970 she went solo and last year she released her 25th solo album out, Thank You. Her first in fifteen years.

The album is not a high-flyer and you wonder why one of the most successful women in pop history goes to all that effort. Even without a new record, it is not easy to include a representative selection of her immense number of hits in her concert program.

And whoever saw her perform on British television last month for about a hundred thousand enthusiastic festival-goers at Glastonbury, saw a singer who could fully live on her former glory. In fact, the bevy of sing-along hits became after the Supremes block at the beginning (baby love† You Can’t Hurry Love† Stop! In the Name of Love) and her last big hit Chain Reaction (1985) annoyingly interrupted by three new songs that almost fell dead. The euphoria was great when her great band played the 42-year-old disco classic Upside Down bet. But Ross wants to be more than a golden oldie, she wants to show that she still counts in today’s pop.

And she’s been doing that all her life, by partnering up with the right producers and songwriters at the right time.

Via Ashford & Simpson in the 1970s and Nile Rodgers and the Bee Gees in the 1980s, she ended up last year with the super hip Jack Antonoff who worked with Taylor Swift, Lana del Rey and Lorde, among others.

Antonoff will also have helped her pair up with Australian musician and producer Kevin Parker, better known as the man behind the indie rock phenomenon Tame Impala. Together they came up with the infectious Turn Up The Sunshineintended for the just released soundtrack at the new Minions movie The Rise of Gruz† It is one of Ross’ best singles in decades and Kevin Parker actually does the same as Nile Rodgers in 1980. Both gave their own sound to the singer who wanted to connect with current events.

Disco

Such a success as the hits produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards (then the heart of the disco sensation Chic) Upside Down and I’m Coming Outis Turn Up the Sunshine didn’t make it, but hopefully Ross Parker has shown a little more gratitude than her producers in 1980. Almost was the album Dianaone of the highlights in both her oeuvre and that of her producers, did not appear. Because Ross and her team didn’t dare to take the typical disco sound of Chic on that record. Even if that was exactly what Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards were hired for.

Ross had in 1979 with The Boss thanks to the help of songwriters, producer duo and artist couple Ashford & Simpson finally again made a successful album, but the sales figures lagged far behind those of Chic. Team Ross didn’t like that. The collaboration between Ross and Chic in 1980 was actually a risk for both, explains Rodgers in his autobiography Le Freak (2011). The popularity of disco was on the wane, as witnessed by the often heard cry ‘disco sucks’ at the time. But the royalties of the Chic hits Le Freak and Good Times came in by the millions, so the producers had no worries for the future.

Rodgers wanted to give everything to make the collaboration with Ross a success. The album Diana was to be his artistic masterpiece. And Diana Ross, in turn, finally wanted real hits again, as Chic had scored them.

But record boss Berry Gordy saw nothing in the album and the single Upside Down and claimed the tires. Diana would eventually appear anyway, but in a different, slacker mix. The Rodgers and Edwards version didn’t see the light until 2003 on the ‘Deluxe Edition’ of Diana† It sounds spicier and has a better, danceable disco feel. Yet songs like Upside Down† My Old Piano and later embraced it as an anthem by the gay community I’m Coming Out so strong that they survived even in that inferior version.

Those songs have been at the heart of the concerts of both Diana Ross and Nile Rodgers’ Chic for years. When Ross opens tonight at 9 o’clock in the Nile Hall with I’m Coming Out, the packed room will be euphoric. The song has been a for decades gay anthem, but Ross already had iconic status among gay men before Rodgers wrote the song, according to his memoir. In 1979, while going to the toilet in a New York disco, he found himself surrounded by transvestites who all looked like Ross. What would it be like, he thought, if Diana were to sing of this status in some sort of code language? That’s how I’m Coming Out† It’s been the start of Diana’s show for years, including at Glastonbury.

ballads

Actually, there are three pillars on which her concerts and in fact her entire existence as a singer rest: the indestructible Supremes hits from the sixties, the disco stompers from the early eighties and the ballads. That last category with songs like Touch Me in the Morning† Theme From ‘Mahogany’ (Do you know where you’re going to) and Endless Love neglects them on stage in recent years. And while it fits a festival like North Sea Jazz, Ross will also ignore Billie Holiday’s repertoire that she so cleverly mastered in film half a century ago. Lady Sings the Blues.

Her voice may no longer be able to handle ballads. It has definitely lost some strength and flexibility, as the BBC told us last month. But it doesn’t really matter that much. Everyone at North Sea Jazz in the undoubtedly overflowing hall will sing along word for word. And she just stands there in front of us: Diana Ross, accompanied by an excellent band, singing songs that have become indispensable in the collective memory.