“There is absolutely nothing in this world like what happens when disco music is operating at peak capacity,” (Stereogum). “Disco was a wave that swept all across pop music for years. It was tremendous, all-encompassing, and, when done wrong, flattening. The whole genre was more or less built around a drum pattern — a stead thump-thump-thump kick — that kept people in clubs moving and made it easy for DJs to blend one song into the next … There were people who became stars because of disco, and there were fading stars who used disco to extend or even elevate their fame. But disco, like early rock ‘n’ roll, was also a genre of fast, elusive, one-time success.
Every once in a while, when everything lined up just right, a long-toiling artist could hit just the right sound at just the right moment and make something immortal. That’s what happened when Thelma Houston made ‘Don’t Leave Me This Way’ … Most of Thelma Houston’s career works as a story of what happens when the starmaking machine fails. Houston — no relation to Whitney or her extended clan — was an absolute monster of a singer, one who was capable of taking her gospel training and using it to make earthly concerns sound urgent and wracked and overwhelmingly joyous. She spent years with Motown, a label that should’ve known exactly what to do with a singer of her surpassing power. But for Thelma Houston, everything clicked exactly once. Thankfully, that one time was something special.”
Starting in Bb mixolydian for the wordless (and initially grooveless) intro and verse, the tune shifts to C mixolydian for the chorus at 1:19. Billboard included the track on its list of 70 Best LGBTQ Anthems of All Time: “This Motown Hot 100 No. 1 hit in April 1977 was appropriated by the gay community as an anthem for friends lost to the AIDS epidemic. As part of a commissioned ‘public space statement,’ artist Nayland Blake juxtaposed the title of the song against an image of a bouquet of flowers with their tangled roots showing.”
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