"We Are Family" | ||||
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Single by Sister Sledge | ||||
from the album We Are Family | ||||
B-side | "Easier to Love" | |||
Released | April 1979 | |||
Format | 7-inch single | |||
Recorded | 1978 | |||
Studio | The Power Station, New York City | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 8:24 | |||
Label | Cotillion | |||
Writer(s) | ||||
Producer(s) |
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Sister Sledge singles chronology | ||||
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"We Are Family" is a song by the American vocal group Sister Sledge. The song was composed by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers. Rodgers and Edwards offered the song to Atlantic Records; although the record label initially declined, the track was released as a single from the album of the same name in April 1979 and began to gain club and radio play.
"We Are Family" went Gold, becoming the number one R&B and number two pop song on the US charts in 1979 (behind "Hot Stuff" by Donna Summer). Along with the tracks, "He's the Greatest Dancer" and "Lost in Music", "We Are Family" reached number one on the disco charts. It was also the theme song for the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates.
In 2017, the song was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or artistically significant."
"We Are Family" was the first song that Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards wrote for any other act than their own band Chic. After their first hit "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)", Atlantic Records President Jerry L. Greenberg wanted the pair to write and produce for other acts on the label, which Rodgers and Edwards considered far too big and established, i.e.: The Rolling Stones, Bette Midler, etc. Their point was that any credit of a hit for such an established act would just go to the performing bigger act, and not establish Rodgers/Edwards as songwriter/producers. So the pair suggested that they write and produce a song for the label's least established act, and that if they got them a hit record, then they could take the challenge of writing for a bigger act.