Love Rollercoaster

The genius of this track is structural — the Ohio Players built it around the literal metaphor of a rollercoaster, and then had the discipline to actually ride it. The tempo shifts, the dynamic rises and falls, the vocal performances go from conversational to shrieking, and a roller coaster's mechanical ascent is actually audible in the arrangement. It is a funk song that commits to its own gimmick so completely that the gimmick stops being one. The bass guitar does extraordinary work here, anchoring the track even through its most vertiginous moments, and the horn section moves in and out of the mix with a precision that suggests careful arrangement beneath all the apparent chaos. The lyric is a description of infatuation as a loss of control — the singer is not in charge of what's happening to him, and the music enacts that feeling rather than simply describing it. There is something almost ecstatic in the performance, a willingness to be ridiculous in service of a feeling. The famous female scream embedded partway through the track became iconic, later sampled widely, functioning as both a moment of pure sonic theater and a genuinely startling break from the groove's momentum. This is a party track, but an intelligent one — best heard on speakers large enough to let the bass physically register, at the kind of gathering where everyone already knows the words.