Good Times

Edwards and Rodgers wrote and produced it, and Atlantic released it as a single in June 1979, backed with A Warm Summer Night. It reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 18 August 1979, before The Knack's My Sharona replaced it the next week, and number 5 in Britain. It reportedly sold more than five million copies, and Billboard named it the top soul single of 1979. The lyric quotes Happy Days Are Here Again and lines based on About a Quarter to Nine as made famous by Al Jolson. Rodgers has said these Depression-era references were a hidden way to comment on the economic conditions of the time. It also tells listeners to put on their roller skates, alluding to the roller disco trend. In a 2015 interview he said Kool and the Gang's Hollywood Swinging partly inspired it.

Daryl Easlea of the BBC called it the greatest track on the album, with its striking, repetitive strangeness, and described Edwards's 20-note riff as driving the record over Tony Thompson's crispest snare-crack. Paul Lester of the Guardian heard lyrical barbs every few bars that signal the irony of the title. Rolling Stone's entry on its list of the 500 greatest songs describes a hedonistic roller-boogie hit with an ironic edge and says it was the bass that kicked off the hip-hop era.

Rapper's Delight and after

On 20 and 21 September 1979, when Blondie and Chic played the Palladium in New York with the Clash, members of the Sugarhill Gang and Fab Five Freddy jumped on stage and freestyled as Chic started Good Times. Weeks later Rodgers heard the opening bass line from Good Times on a record at the club Leviticus, an early version of Rapper's Delight. He and Edwards immediately threatened legal action over copyright, which ended in a settlement and their being credited as co-writers. Rodgers later called it one of his favorite songs of all time, and Chic traditionally work part of Rapper's Delight into Good Times when they play it live.

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five built The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel on it. John Deacon's bass line for Queen's Another One Bites the Dust in 1980 was inspired by it, and Blondie's Rapture was influenced by it. Rolling Stone ranked it number 68 on its 2024 list of the 500 greatest songs and number 3 on its 2022 list of dance songs.