It Has to be Real

Cheryl Lynn was the first to sing the infamous disco number-one hit “Got to Be Real.” I heard it first the song, which I thought was an Mary J. Blige original, in the 2004 Dream Works animated film Shark Tale. However, in 2010, heard it again by a Japanese singer named Koda Kumi. I stopped and thought “Is she covering the song now?” I decided to Google it. Shockingly, I found out that it was a 70’s original . How can something 4 decades ago still live on to the 21st century? Who do we thank for this? The Art Worlds. Their collective activity made this one of the ultimate theme song for the Disco Culture.(Photo in the center: Cheryl Lyn in 2005 receiving an award for Dance Music Hall of Fame for the song Got to Be Real.)

How do we know that it’s popular? Well, other than its commercial success (that was conducted a Dance Music Hall of Fame), it is well liked and it’s iconic to the 70’s. Now every time I hear the instrumental I think of disco balls and lights and people “getting their groove on”. We can also agree that it’s authentic to the Dance and Disco culture, as that’s the group of people it belongs to; disco dancers. May believe that it is dead but “disco is still alive”.

So Cheryl Lyn sang the song, but there’s a whole team behind the song which makes the interlocking relationship for this cultural object. This interlocking relationship includes writers, producers, musicians, music video makers, dancers and every single person who contributed to create this cultural object. Written by Cheryl Lynn, David Paich and David Foster, they are still accredited today for the new covers because they made it happen. (Photo on right: shows the original writers on the booklet of the 2010 cover.)

We can’t deny that it is globally ubiquitous. As a matter fact many different cultures sampled the instrumental into their songs including Dominic Republic, South Korea, Japan, Australia, England and so on; they borrow the signature introduction of the song and the instrumental hook. There are also official covers where artists directly sing the song in their own way. The video below will show the different artist and their versions and you can find the list of the artists who sampled the song in this link.

Untitled from Juicyyification on Vimeo.