From left: Gladys Knight, Chaka Khan, Patti LaBelle and Stephanie Mills
Where do you even start with a bill as epic as The Queens Tour, the quadruple-headliner R&B extravaganza that rolls into Bridgestone Arena on Sunday? Each of the stars — Gladys Knight, Patti LaBelle, Chaka Khan and Stephanie Mills — deserves at least an article if not a book, a movie and a collectible plate commemorating each one’s accomplishments in the field of pop music. We are talking about four women who’ve recorded so many bangers and so many ballads of such immense quality that the mind can barely comprehend. Each has created songs that are embedded so deep in our collective consciousness that it is difficult to imagine a time when they were not part of the fabric of global groove.
Let’s start with “Midnight Train to Georgia,” the greatest Side 1 Track 1 of all time and just one jewel among many in Gladys Knight’s crown. For Knight, who turns 81 later this month, this little piece of pop perfection marked the start of a new era after a long run as a hit-making, Grammy-winning Motown artist as the frontwoman of Gladys Knight & the Pips. While at Motown, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer was the first of these four to have a hit with “I Heard It Through the Grapevine,” which I’ll argue was the zenith of popular music in the Motown era.
Leading off the absolutely essential 1973 album Imagination, “Midnight Train” is inarguably one of the finest songs this country has ever produced — a perfect blend of yearning and resolve, lust and love. It won a Grammy as well, and marked Knight’s first No. 1 on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100, amid a career whose other highlights include 11 No. 1 R&B singles, six No. 1 R&B albums and an absolutely dominant run on The Masked Singer.
While we’re in that early-’70s mode, let’s move on to legendary sweet potato pie purveyor Patti LaBelle. While Knight was off on that midnight train, veteran vocal-group singer LaBelle was fronting one of the best rock bands of the 1970s, the unfuckwithable trio Labelle. Incendiary and provocative — they recorded the hands-down-best version of “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” — the vocal trio combined girl-group sensibilities, glam-rock proclivities and stadium-sized ambitions. Not to mention that they just happened to predict the rise of disco with their indelible 1974 smash hit “Lady Marmalade.”
Miss Patti spent the ’80s crossing over to the pop realm and becoming a permanent fixture in the lexicon with contributions to the Beverly Hills Cop soundtrack and “On My Own,” her unflappably smooth duet with yacht-rock captain Michael McDonald. In the intervening years, she has conquered diverse industries from frozen foods to bedding to television, because apparently there is nothing this woman can’t do.
While we are here, let me tell you about my magical Chaka Khan T-shirt. It’s fan art made with more love than accuracy. But when I wear it out of the house, it attracts all the fun people and repels all the blues lawyers. And all of the fun people have different reasons for loving Chaka. For some, her iconic ’80s hit “I Feel for You” — featuring a powerhouse cross-section of the era’s Black music via contributions from Melle Mel, Stevie Wonder and Prince (who also wrote the song) — was the soundtrack to their youth. For others, “Clouds” and her soaring jazz-inflected disco-funk years represent American dance music at its best.
Then there are those who came into the fold via Whitney Houston’s “I’m Every Woman” cover. And there’s the folks who stan her drum skills and wax rhapsodic about her work with Rufus. Personally, I just want to preach the gospel of her 2018 single “Like Sugar,” a Fatback Band-sampling slice of contemporary groove that lives rent-free in my head forever. Something that unites all the fun people: They know that Khan elevates every verse and chorus she has come in contact with over five decades and counting.
Completing this quadfecta is Stephanie Mills, whose 1980s R&B chart-toppers are so sultry they should come with free contraception. Her new single, a deep house cover of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” that feels like a guided meditation, is absolute fire. Intimate and inspirational, this track exists for one reason only: to leave the dance floor a smoldering crater. It’s a fitting late-inning push that recalls her ’90s collaborations with house heroes Masters at Work and her OG disco hits like “What Cha Gonna Do With My Lovin’.” In a career that has spanned from Motown to Broadway — including the definitive cast recording of The Wiz — and from gospel to get-down, Mills has made music that pulses with the rhythms of life, pains of love and an enduring spirit that transcends genre and time.
