"Turn The Beat Around" by Vicki Sue Robinson

The disco era seems to have had more than its fair share of one-hit wonders; ah, but what hits they were! It's difficult to explain to people who can't or won't appreciate disco - and I've already expended enough breath in the defense of gay folk music to have inflated a sizable blimp - so I will spare the delicate sensibilities of my readers (not to mention my own lungs) any further rhetoric on my part.

This particular tune is called Turn the Beat Around, and was made famous by Vicki Sue Robinson; for that special camp flavour, the video is slightly out of synch, just like most of the queens who used to sashay this around countless dance floors ten thousand midnights ago. Be thankful, then, that unlike them her dress is on straight, she isn't grinding her teeth, and her makeup isn't visible from space.

Today would have been Ms. Robinson's 56th birthday; alas, she was taken far too soon, dying of cancer in April 2000, just as her career was experiencing a resurgence when disco came back into fashion as part of the retro craze of the mid-1990s. Thanks to modern technology, though, some part of her will always be with us - just like it can be 1976 whenever we want, and in the best possible way as well: in safe, three minute doses.
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