Milestones

Pointer Sisters

Name: Pointer Sisters – Break Out
Item: Break Out
Author: Damiano Pandolfini

Break Out

1983 (Planet)

dance-pop, synth-funk-rock

by Damiano Pandolfini

The perfect pop album

How do you create the perfect pop album? And who's better suited to sell its grooves to the mainstream audience? Get comfortable, because these are questions industry insiders have been trying to answer for at least seventy years of record-business history, and the solution still hasn't surfaced. The thing is, the formula keeps adapting to the times and slipping through the rules, showing — at best — a 50/50 shot at success between expert calculation and sheer luck. Better to go in prepared, sure, but stubbornness often doesn't pay off; it also helps to trust your instincts and have a bit of fun along the way, because that's something you can usually just feel.

With a decade of varied, up-and-down activity already behind them, and one sister lost along the way, the Pointer Sisters of 1983 are hardly the freshest permed young hopefuls to be thrown at the altar of the perfect pop album. Ruth, Anita and June will surely be tenacious performers in their career, but they're also mothers (often absent ones) and wives (at various stages of love and/or divorce). In the early months of 1984, thirty-seven-year-old Ruth even becomes a grandmother for the first time. Their charming, boisterous, family-run image doesn't exactly carry the star power needed to draw huge crowds of young fans — not to mention their past singing covers of swing, jazz and blues numbers. By their tenth studio album, by now, expectations for the Pointer Sisters aren't even among the highest.

And yet, it's also thanks to these worldly and unusual ingredients that “Break Out” slips out of the hands of everyone involved and cuts through the early-80s record market like a dazzling comet, one that sets off from Stevie Wonder, passes through the Prince of “Dirty Mind” and “Controversy”, and arrives all the way at Rick James e Michael Jackson, but not before getting shoved around by the Human League and by the Eurythmics and taking a few slaps in the face from Cyndi Lauper and the Duran Duran. Et voilà: “Break Out” is the kind of record able to capture the neuroses of dancefloor and of the most synthetic funk, blending them with the arrival of the Second British Invasion with a solid melodic sense adult contemporary entirely African-American in spirit. Ten songs that sum up the mixed-race hot-blooded energy of the early 80s, orphaned by the disco music. An album that looks more like a prism, through which white light turns into a rainbow.

Chronology of a success

In October 1983, “I Need You” hits record store shelves; it's a stylish soul-pop track with which producer Richard Perry intends to relaunch the Pointer Sisters onto the American R&B chart. Led by all three sisters in a round-like exchange that plays on the contrast between their different vocal timbres, “I Need You” unfolds with passionate elegance over a melody of eternal catchiness and a rhythm slow as boogieThe production underneath is like a cocktail by moonlight, between delicate guitar arpeggios, a thread of strings, gusts of synth and drums assisted by a drum machine for an entirely modern touch that doesn't distract from the charm vintage of the atmosphere.

In the field, “I Need You” doesn't fare too badly, but mainstream radio only has ears for another track on the album, the effervescent “Automatic”: amid layers and sub-layers of keyboards weaving their timbres from robotic to quicksilver, that snap of bass underlining the shifts in the songwriting, and Ruth's contralto leading a lyric of intense erotic obsession with an androgynous allure straddling Grace Jones e David Bowie, the track immediately falls in line alongside the most dazzling funk productions of the era (it will go on to win a Grammy for “Best Vocal Arrangement for Two or More Voices”).

Within a few weeks “Automatic” becomes a hit that spills over from America into the rest of the English-speaking world, as had already happened with other Pointer songs, but this time its success is immediately matched by another irresistible single that, by mid-1984, is a smash everywhere: “Jump” – later retitled “Jump (For My Love)” in future editions – is an absolute blast, built on a bouncy, squared-off rhythm like a contemporary European production inspired by kraftwerkiana, with that iconic surrounding synth riff and the sisters working themselves into a frenzy over it – the transition from verse to chorus happens through a crescendo that winds up like a spring before leaping into the air. Impossible to sit still in the face of the girls' excited performance , even the Grammy jury noticed, awarding the track “Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal”.

A more prophetic title for an album could not have been found, but the beauty of “Break Out” is realizing that, beyond the singles, the songs on the tracklist flow one more exquisite than the next.

There's the synth-rock swagger of “Baby, Come And Get It” and “Operator”, both polished with sheens of keyboards but propped up by an aggressive guitar attitude: the first has the feel of a boogie in midtempo but is underpinned by a sturdy guitar hard who in the interlude launches into a solo amid the sisters' ecstatic little shrieks, while the second one screeches and bounces around like the little racing car from an old video game. And that's not even mentioning “Dance Electric”, which opens with gloomy nocturnal hints only to suddenly light up like a spaceship in the pitch-black darkness of space, amid blip robotic ones, with Ruth's voice leading the track and Anita and June joining in at just the right moment to accent that cavernous refrain which then resolves into a goofy, piratical refrain.

Written – among others – by Glen Ballard (better known years later as a collaborator of Alanis Morissette), first recorded by Michael Jackson for “Thriller”, and later covered by Randy Crawford, “Nightline” is the most futuristic moment in the track listing, and the Pointer Sisters' version is definitely the definitive one: a fizzy electr(on)ic tension, jumpy and nervous, an echo on the backing vocals engineered for effect, the swaggering synth-and-guitar riff that creates a curious harmonic jolt to announce the arrival of the verse, sizzling pinwheels of Minneapolis sounda drum machine that bounces on the linoleuman irresistible concentrate of the 80s, as 80s as it gets.

Of course, the perfect pop album wouldn't be complete without the classic slow moments. Alongside the single “I Need You”, there's the smooth, velvety “Easy Persuasion”, which glides along on a sparkling, steady bassline, with the girls harmonizing in unison before splitting into a placid, love-struck bliss.

It's hard, if anything, to pick a favorite song from the whole collection, but that keyboard riff italo-disco on “Telegraph Your Love” it's like a pinch of nostalgia to the heart during a sunset walk on the beach in the middle of summer, the melodic line sung by the girls melts and aches like melted butter, but the driving rhythm of drum machine in the background doesn't let up, giving the track an ecstasy of eternal melancholy you wish would never end.

It's impossible not to say a few words about the famous “Neutron Dance”; written by Allee Willis and Danny Sembello with the intention of being included in the film “Streets Of Fire” (a sort of musical with apocalyptic, post-atomic overtones), the song is like rock'n'roll from the '50s reshaped for the synthetic taste of the '80s, great fun yet pervaded by a strange frenzy. At first Ruth isn't convinced by the lyrics: the references to Cold War nuclear tensions are an unusual subject for a pop song, but it's precisely the contrast between the sparkling chord progression and the lyrics that makes “Neutron Dance” such a great little gem. The original version of the track never ends up in “Streets Of Fire”, but the Pointer Sisters' version is used in the famous film “Beverly Hills Cop” in a chase scene as curious as it is comical, giving the whole thing a tragicomic feel. Thanks to the film's huge box-office success (the biggest of the year), “Neutron Dance” climbs into the American Top Ten in the early months of '85, keeping public interest alive for an album that was by then over a year old.

The whole of “Break Out” is reissued as early as '84, swapping out “Nightline” for “I’m So Excited”, a single taken from the previous album that even back then deserved much more: presented here in a slightly remixed version, “I'm So Excited” drills its way back into the Top Ten in no time, stylistically aligning itself with “Jump” and “Neutron Dance” as a pulsing dance track straddling vintage and urban unrest.

In conclusion

With three million copies sold in America alone, a total of four Top Ten singles, two Grammys and two American Music Awards under its belt, “Break Out” is one of those rare, fortunate moments where the quality of a record is met with immediate mass success and swiftly cemented into the American popular imagination.

Future generations are left with the chance to hear a pop album of enviable craftsmanship; ten textbook songs, written, produced and performed with real professionalism, yet imbued with a forward-looking spirit of adventure that seems never to age. Hundreds of vocal groups over the following decades would try to recreate its magic, and some would manage it without much trouble, proof that the formula for the perfect pop album isn't so untameably elusive after all, but must be understood and shaped to fit its exact historical moment.

In the case of “Break Out”, was it skill, luck, or both? It hardly matters now: even as it sails toward its fortieth anniversary, listening to its grooves remains fizzy, stimulating and never short on pathos, a small but precious chapter in the history of American musical entertainment that deserves to be remembered.

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15/11/2020

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This article is an English translation of the original Italian text by Damiano Pandolfini, published on OndaRock.it. It was translated with the help of artificial intelligence, under the editorial responsibility of OndaRock's editor-in-chief, Claudio Fabretti.

Read the original in Italian · About the English edition

Tracklist

1. Jump
2. Automatic
3. Baby, Come And Get It
4. I Need You
5. Dance Electric
6. Neutron Dance
7. Easy Persuasion
8. Nightline
9. Telegraph Your Love
10. Operator

Pointer Sisters on OndaRock

Monograph

Pointer Sisters

A family affair

Starting out as a quartet before finding major success as a trio, California's Pointer Sisters were a beloved family affair for at least a couple of generations. From jazz and swing to psychedelic jams, and then on to rock, funk, dance, and an unexpected country hit: Ruth, Anita, Bonnie & June entertained half of America with their smiles and their energetic vocal harmonies