When Sabrina Chippie’s provocative 2024 pop unmarried “Bed Chem” performs at the radio, and I pay attention the lyrics
“But I bet we’d have really good bed chem / How you pick me up, pull ‘em down, turn me ’round / Oh, it just makes sense / How you talk so sweet when you’re doing bad things”
it jogs my memory of a track launched 45 years previous:
“Let’s take a shower, said a shower together, yes / I’ll wash your body and you’ll wash mine, yeah / Rub me down in some, some hot oils, baby / And I’ll do the same thing to you”
—“Turn Off the Lights” via Teddy Pendergrass
Rising up in Philadelphia within the Nineties, I listened to soul singer-turned-R&B intercourse image Teddy Pendergrass and different artists who outlined the Sound of Philadelphia. Now, as a professor of ethnic research, I educate scholars in regards to the affect of Black artists on trendy popular culture.
Pendergrass would have became 75 this 12 months. Even though he died in 2010, he helped herald an generation of tune that introduced each disco and extra mature, sensual tune to the mainstream – and I see his affect in quite a lot of pop and R&B hits nowadays.
“Turn Off the Lights” via Teddy Pendergrass.
The Philadelphia sound
Theodore DeReese Pendergrass used to be born in South Carolina in 1950, however he grew up in North Philadelphia, the place he sang and performed drums in church and changed into an ordained minister at age 10.
He dropped out of Thomas Edison Prime Faculty within the eleventh grade to pursue a tune profession, and he recorded “Angel With Muddy Feet” in 1967. The track used to be now not a business good fortune, so he occupied with taking part in drums for quite a lot of native bands.
In 1970, Pendergrass used to be invited via Philly soul and R&B singer Harold Melvin to play drums along with his team, the Blue Notes. All over a efficiency, Pendergrass sang alongside, main Melvin to ask him to take over as lead vocalist after John Atkins left the crowd. The next 12 months, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes signed a file care for the newly created Philadelphia Global Data, forging a partnership between Pendergrass and label founders and mythical manufacturers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff that may remaining over a decade.
Teddy Pendergrass (2nd from proper) plays with Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes on the Greek Theatre in 1973 in Los Angeles.
Sherry Rayn Barnett /Michael Ochs Archives by the use of Getty Pictures
Philadelphia Global’s affect used to be felt right through the tune trade, with Gamble and Huff generating most of the hits carried out via the label’s artists. Gamble and Huff mixed soul and funk with advanced horn and string preparations to create the Philly soul sound.
This sound changed into key within the construction of disco, clean jazz and neo-soul. Slower, extra intimate R&B and clean jazz additionally shaped the root for the “quiet storm” radio layout that Pendergrass helped foster as a solo artist on stations like WDAS in Philadelphia.
Marvin Gaye’s 1973 album “Let’s Get It On” used to be Motown’s reaction to the emergence of Philly Soul, and helped popularize extra explicitly sensual R&B and soul.
Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes had their first No. 1 hit with 1972’s “If You Don’t Know Me by Now.” Whilst at the Philadelphia Global label, the crowd recorded 4 gold information between 1972 and 1976. One among their largest hits, “Don’t Leave Me This Way” in 1975, used to be now not launched till November 1976. It charted after R&B and disco singer Thelma Houston’s quilt of the track hit No. 1 at the Billboard Scorching 100 chart in 1977.
Going solo
Pendergrass left the Blue Notes in 1976 after disputes with Melvin over cash, however he stayed on with Philadelphia Global and started a solo profession. His self-titled album used to be launched in 1977, and the primary unmarried, “I Don’t Love You Anymore,” reached No. 5 at the R&B charts, serving to to push the album into the highest 20.
The next 12 months, his “Life Is a Song Worth Singing” hit No. 1 at the Soul LP chart at the back of the sensual unmarried “Close the Door.”
R&B heartthrob Teddy Pendergrass plays on level circa 1977.
Gilles Petard/Redferns by the use of Getty Pictures
Pendergrass, along with his trendy excellent appears to be like, temporarily changed into now not only a heartthrob, however a most sensible R&B artist with 5 consecutive platinum albums between 1977 and 1981. He used to be promoting out concert events, and mythical manufacturer Shep Gordon identified that the majority of the attendees had been ladies. This resulted in Pendergrass’ “Ladies Only” excursion in 1978, which changed into a template for long term soul and R&B excursions via contemporaries like Luther Vandross and later artists like Ginuwine, whose excursions had been additionally advertised particularly to ladies.
The 1979 erotic hit “Turn Off the Lights” reinforced Pendergrass’ popularity as a intercourse image. Whilst Marvin Gaye used to be coping with each monetary and private problems, Pendergrass changed into the highest performer of soul “bedroom ballads.”
Pendergrass and Gaye, in conjunction with different contemporaries like Barry White, Minnie Riperton and Donna Summer time, integrated extra explicitly erotic subject matters and lyrics than previous artists.
As an example, in Gaye’s “Let’s Get it On,” he implores to his lover:
“There’s nothin’ wrong with me / Lovin’ you, baby love, love / And givin’ yourself to me can never be wrong / If the love is true, oh baby.”
In “Close the Door,” Pendergrass in a similar fashion tells his lover:
“Close the door / Let me give you what you’ve been waiting for / Baby I got so much love to give / And I wanna give it all … to you …”
One problem for the songwriters like Gamble and Huff used to be to stability the sensuality that enthusiasts liked with Federal Conversation Fee regulations relating to profane language. Songs like “Turn Down the Lights,” written via Gamble and Huff for Pendergrass, describe an in depth evening of romance with out language that may be thought to be obscene via the FCC.
Sluggish jams and intercourse positivity
R&B and soul gradual jams via artists like Freddie Jackson and Vandross ruled bed room tune during the Eighties, even if spinoff genres like neo-soul and quiet hurricane persevered to provide bed room ballads like Gaye’s “Sexual Healing” in 1982.
Madonna and Cyndi Lauper helped deliver a feminine standpoint to extra sex-positive pop tune with songs together with “Like a Virgin” and “She Bop.” Janet Jackson and Salt-N-Pepa did the similar in R&B and hip-hop. Different teams embraced their intercourse image standing during the Nineties, exemplified via TLC’s “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg” and “Creep,” and Subsequent’s “Too Close.” The artists of the Eighties and Nineties had been additionally boosted via MTV, bringing a visible part to their sensual lyrics.
The emergence of recent jack swing, a time period coined in 1987 to outline a brand new taste that mixed dance, hip-hop and R&B, ushered in higher-tempo erotic songs like “Do Me!” via Bel Biv Devoe in conjunction with slower bed room ballads like “I’ll Make Love to You” via Philadelphia’s Boyz II Males.
Philly’s Boyz II Males carried the bed room ballad custom into the Nineties with “I’ll Make Love to You.”
Bed room ballads with disco-synth makeover
Philadelphia Global’s sound and sensual lyrics have reemerged lately thru artists Sabrina Chippie and Chappell Roan, whose synth-pop and disco sound can also be traced again to Gamble and Huff, and the label’s strong of artists.
Proto-disco songs like “The Love I Lost” and “Don’t Leave Me This Way” via Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and Pendergrass’ disco hit “Get Up, Get Down, Get Funky, Get Loose” – or his later synthesizer-heavy album “Joy” – would affect present synth-pop hits like Roan’s disco-influenced “Pink Pony Club” and Chippie’s synth-pop “Manchild.”
Chappell Roan’s campy, disco-influenced hit “Pink Pony Club.”
Chippie specifically has reputedly struck that stability between mainstream good fortune and sensual lyrics. Her previous 3 albums were qualified platinum and embody increasingly more mature subject matters similar to feminine arousal.
“Man’s Best Friend,” launched in August 2025, sparked controversy with a sexually suggestive album quilt that additional cemented her Chippie’s image symbol. This symbol is strengthened via her level presence, like dancing in her undies on “Saturday Night Live” and mature songs like “Tears,”
“Tears” via Sabrina Chippie.
Pendergrass’ profession used to be derailed when he misplaced regulate of his automobile on Lincoln Force within the East Falls group of Philadelphia in 1982. The twist of fate left him a tetraplegic. He later persevered his tune profession, however the “Black Elvis” moved clear of bed room ballads.
Even though Pendergrass’ meteoric upward thrust used to be lower brief, his affect remains to be noticed and heard throughout tune genres nowadays, particularly as empowered feminine artists make the most of disco and synth-pop sounds whilst embracing their sexuality thru their songs and performances.
