Risqué

Recorded and mixed at the Power Station in New York, with additional recording at Electric Lady Studios in New York and Kendun Recorders in Burbank, California. Daryl Easlea of the BBC wrote that it had a budget of $160,000. The tap dancers Eugene Jackson, Fayard Nicholas and Sammy Warren play the solo on My Feet Keep Dancing, and Bob Clearmountain engineered. Paul Lester of the Guardian noted that the album was only 36 minutes long.

Singles included Good Times, which reached number one in the United States and number 5 in Britain, My Forbidden Lover (number 43 in the United States, number 15 in Britain) and My Feet Keep Dancing (number 101 in the United States, number 21 in Britain). The album reached number 5 on the US albums chart and number 2 on the R&B chart and was certified platinum by the RIAA. In Britain it reached number 29 and was certified silver.

Reception

Easlea called it one of the greatest exhibits in the case for disco's defence and Chic's most sustained artistic statement, a celebration of a 1970s collapsing under its own excess and hedonism. He called it the disco album as a rock classic, and described Will You Cry (When You Hear This Song) as a painfully beautiful ballad and one of Alfa Anderson's best performances. Lester wrote that it was a virtual concept album about the agony people inflict on each other, and called it pure ethereal sorrow. He singled out the stabbing, staccato violins and noted that Rodgers was a Bernard Herrmann fan. Robert Christgau gave it an A-minus and wrote that it was subtle, intricate, kinetic, light but not mindless. In 2020 Rolling Stone ranked it number 414 on its list of the 500 greatest albums.