1979 No. 1, Once Called the 'Best Song of the Summer,' Remains a Party Favorite Nearly 50 Years Later
A beloved 1979 classic was once hailed as the "Best Song of the Summer," and its popularity hasn't slowed down since.
Chic went all the way to No. 1 in the summer of 1979 with "Good Times." The dance hit captured the carefree spirit of the season, becoming an anthem for those looking to dance the night away.
Billboard listed the Disco Music classic as one of the Top Songs of the Summer from '79. Other tunes listed from that season included Donna Summer's "Bad Girls," and "Hot Stuff," Anita Wood's "Ring My Bell," and The Knack's "My Sharona."
Additionally, Rolling Stone ranked "Good Times" as the Best Summer Song of All Time. It beat out other feel-good classics such as Martha and the Vandellas "Dancing in the Street" (1965), Marvin Gaye's "Got to Give It Up" (1977), and The Beach Boys' "California Girls" (1965).
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Rolling Stone wrote, "According to Chic, the sporting life includes clams on the half shell and roller-skating. And as the song that provided the groove for the very first hip-hop hit, the Sugarhill Gang's 'Rapper's Delight,' it stands tall as the proud parent of more subsequent summer jams than any song in history."
According to History, the song's connections began after Sylvia Robinson heard a DJ rapping over records in a Harlem club. She asked her son to find some people he knew who could rap, and chose Chic's "Good Times" as their backing track. The song soon became a smash hit and the first commercially successful rap single.
Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, Chic's founders, threatened legal action for use of their song without their consent. They received songwriting credits on "Rappers Delight," and both songs circled one another on the charts, and in popular culture, throughout the Fall of 1979. "Rapper's Delight" was later inducted into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry in 2011 for its influence on popular culture.
Nile Rodgers told Uncut Magazine (as reported by Songfacts) that "Good Times" was written and recorded in one day.
"I wrote 'Good Times' the morning we recorded it. Bernard was a little late to the studio, but I'd already written out the charts for everybody in the band. We were playing when Bernard walked in," he began.
"He asked the engineers, 'What the hell is that?' The engineer said, ' I don't know, something Nile wrote this morning.' We'd been trying for years to come up with this walking bassline, putting it over and over again on all sorts of songs, but we could never get it right. But that day, I started screaming 'Walk!' over Tony's drums. Bernard said, 'What?' I was shouting 'Walk!' On that particular day, he walked."
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"We get this amazing extra funky thing. I just told the engineer, 'Make it red!' We recorded it. That was it. One take, maybe two."
"Good Times" may have been released almost 50 years ago, but it remains a party anthem to this day. The summertime classic still has a way of bringing people together whenever its familiar groove comes on.
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This story was originally published June 19, 2026 at 7:03 AM.