Songfacts®:

• This song, built around Bernard Edwards' distinctive bassline, is one of the most copied and sampled records ever. With two copies of the record, DJs could create a continuous loop of the instrumental groove, providing a perfect foundation for MCs to rap over.
  
  Rap was emerging at New York block parties, and when Sylvia Robinson assembled The Sugarhill Gang to put a rap song on record, it was "Good Times" that they used for the track, looping it in the studio just like DJs did at the block parties, and even incorporating the string hits from the song.
  
  The result was "Rapper's Delight," which was released later in 1979. It sold a bunch of 12" singles and made the US Top 40 and UK Top 10, becoming the first rap song to do so.
  
  Nile Rodgers of Chic knew that his song was a block party favorite, but he didn't hear "Rapper's Delight" until he was in a club and the DJ played it. He vigorously objected to the use of his song as the track for another, and threatened legal action. Rather than fight it, Sugarhill Records settled with Chic and awarded them full composer credit, so Edwards and Rodgers are listed as the only songwriters on "Rapper's Delight." With no lawsuit, there was no precedent set for sampling, and artists began incorporating tracks from other songs with impunity throughout the '80s. It was Gilbert O' Sullivan whose 1991 lawsuit against Biz Markie finally established the legal ruling that samples must be cleared.
• This song is a joyful look back at the roller-disco decade when, after Nixon and Vietnam and the times of recession, better days seemed to be ahead. "It really was a great time," Nile Rodgers told Esquire. "People were fun loving, kind, generous, open to other people's philosophies, uncritical."
• The line, "Happy days are here again" is a reference to a song of that title that was popular in the 1930s as America was emerging from The Great Depression. When "Good Times" was released, America was recovering from a recession.
• One of life's pleasures mentioned in this song: "clams on the half shell." This was two years before The B-52s released their seafood-inflected hit, "Rock Lobster."
• Another song heavily influenced by "Good Times" was "Another One Bites The Dust" by Queen. Bernard Edwards told the New Musical Express: "Well, that Queen record came about because that bass player spent some time hanging out with us at our studio. But that's OK. What isn't OK is that the press started saying that we had ripped them off! Can you believe that? 'Good Times' came out more than a year before, but it was inconceivable to these people that black musicians could possibly be innovative like that. It was just these dumb disco guys ripping off this rock 'n' roll song."
• Nile Rodgers told Uncut magazine the story of the song: "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 asked the engineers, 'what the hell is that?' The engineer said, ' I don't know, something Nile wrote this morning.' Whenever Bernard was late, he was like a puppy dog with his tail between his legs. Typically, what he and I do is we'd copy each other and then develop our parts after that."
  
  "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."
  
  "Even though my guitar part was strong on the down beats, Bernard decided to push and go to bass before I get to the chord change. I'm not even there yet, so 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."
• The lyric, "Our new state of mind" is often mistaken as "Are you straight or bi?" >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Mjn Seifer - England
• In early 2011, this song was used in a commercial for the Hershey's Drops candy. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Jerro - New Alexandria, PA