The Goddess and Her Prophet: Grace Jones, Trevor Horn, and Slave to the Rhythm
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The post The Goddess and Her Prophet: Grace Jones, Trevor Horn, and Slave to the Rhythm appeared first on Consequence.
Some pop stars control every note that makes it onto their albums, and a producer serves as their mouthpiece making sure each desired sound is exactly in place. Some pawn the entire vision and process onto their producers, and show up merely to record their parts before calling it a day. But every so often, an artist unites with a producer to create their most indelible work, combining both their producer’s vision and specialized abilities with their own. With Trevor Horn behind the boards, Grace Jones achieved this on her legendary 1985 album, Slave to the Rhythm.
Slave to the Rhythm is not merely an album. It’s an experience, a biography, a meditation on Grace Jones as a rhythmic deity. It’s eight versions of a single song that show each facet of Jones’ boundless artistry. Perhaps barring the effervescent Nightclubbing, which turned Jones into a global phenomenon upon its release in 1981, Slave to the Rhythm is her most complete and ambitious experiment.
It also represents the greatest artistry of producer Trevor Horn, who worked tirelessly alongside Bruce Woolley, Steven Lipson, and Simon Darlow to pull off the album’s concept. Together, they created a mythologized presentation of Grace Jones — one whose evocative vision of pop music would influence the genre for years to come.
Here’s something that might sound familiar: When Grace Jones released Slave to the Rhythm in 1985, audiences had been moving away from listening to full albums. MTV dominated the pop culture discussion, prioritizing singles for video syndication, and emphasizing iconography. As Trevor Horn presciently expressed in his 1979 single with The Buggles, video was killing the radio star, and along with it, the album.
But even with MTV’s dominance, there would always be demand for immersion, not just for small offerings, but for a full experience. This is exactly what Jones and Horn had envisioned, and eventually achieved, on Slave to the Rhythm.
Before Slave to the Rhythm landed in her lap, Jones was coming off a new career high. She starred in Conan the Destroyer alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger, appeared as a Bond villain in A View to a Kill, and celebrated her early ’80s “Compass Point Trilogy” with the long-form music video and concert film, A One Man Show. She had proven her dominance as a recording artist as well as an art, fashion, and entertainment icon. Appropriately, she sought a project that could combine each of those celebrated aspects into one striking work.
Meanwhile, Trevor Horn, was shaping the sound of the decade. With bass his primary instrument, Horn leaned into the possibilities of a strong rhythm section while devoting his efforts to mastering newly-minted synthesizers and samplers, like the CMI Fairlight. He founded his own label, ZTT Records, joined the electronic collective Art of Noise, and wrote and recorded hits for Yes, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, and Malcom McLaren.
Horn originally composed “Slave to the Rhythm” for Frankie Goes to Hollywood, but it’s safe to say that no one could actualize the song’s power more than Grace Jones. It would serve as ideal combination of both artists’ impulses: Horn’s acute, atmospheric vision of pop music, and Jones’ ability to transcend the medium altogether.
Horn, as well as fellow songwriters Woolley, Lipson, and Darlow, would jam out a new version of “Slave to the Rhythm” every week to round out the album’s “song cycle” approach. The resulting eight compositions share qualities with each other — repeated commands, the similar two-chord groove from the original, and the occasional bridge that can crack a song open entirely — but they feel singular.
“Slave to the Rhythm,” or “Ladies and Gentlemen: Miss Grace Jones,” as it’s listed on the album, serves as the root of the tree. The branches then lead to songs with decontextualized vocals from the original “Slave” recording (“Operattack” and “The Crossing (Ooh the Action)”), songs with roughly the same chord structure but a totally different feel (“Jones the Rhythm,” “The Frog and the Princess”), and songs that feel more deliberately extracted from the original, tempo, chords, style, and all (“The Fashion Show” and “Don’t Cry – It’s Only the Rhythm”).
Jones doesn’t even sing on every track. There are a few instrumentals, and one with a lengthy monologue delivered courtesy of actor Ian McShane. But even on mostly instrumental cuts like “Don’t Cry – It’s Only the Rhythm” and “The Fashion Show,” Jones’ presence looms everywhere, even if she’s not singing or playing an instrument. Thanks to Horn’s production work with his CMI Fairlight sampler, sometimes it’s just the sound of Jones’ breath suggesting her mythological presence looms around every corner.
She insists, on multiple tracks, to “Keep it up,” to “Never stop the action.” The momentum never ceases, right through to the final interview segment where journalist Paul Morley asks “Are you the center of the universe, is that what you’re saying?” and Jones replies “Yes… yes… mhm. I’d say so… and you?”
Still, it wasn’t enough for Jones to bring Horn into her luxurious mythos, nor was it enough for Horn to bring Jones into his sample and pad-driven jungle. They had to meet in the middle somehow, to give their immersive language purpose and establish the why. With such few lyrics being used in each song, what was Slave to the Rhythm supposed to tell us about Grace Jones? After all that she’d achieved from songs that were, arguably, just as rhythmically engaging, what was to be different about the hypnotizing energy of Slave to the Rhythm?
This is where Jones’ interviews and the album’s monologues come in. They offer contextual anecdotes that encapsulate Jones’ journey to the top — her fashion escapades in Paris, her importance to the gay community, and her exploration of personal identity. Ian McShane’s story is perhaps the most illuminating; though it’s told in first-person, it actually describes the partnership between Grace Jones and her longtime art director, Jean-Paul Goude.
McShane describes Goude meeting her in Paris, where she was “the first to take radical fashion out of its predictable Parisian context and bring into the music scene.” Like “The Frog and the Princess'” title suggests, the scene plays out like a fairy tale — they begin working together, McShane describes an “intense, hysterical romance” that developed between two, they had a son together, moved to America, and eventually, Jones’ profile grew so large that Goude admits he had lost her.
But crucially, Goude’s story features the confession that he had decided to “mythologize Grace Jones.” Goude describes being so transfixed by her’ image that it became a religious awakening — an experience he felt audiences deserved to witness for themselves. Meanwhile, McShane’s delivery of the monologue is ridden with lust, making Goude’s story about their fated, unattainable relationship a prime example of the divinity Jones sought to present.
The album isn’t all diva worship, however. When Jones speaks in her interviews — like her off-the-cuff remark at the end of “Jones the Rhythm” where she qualifies, “And if you’re wondering what’s wrong with my voice, it’s because I just choked on my saliva!” — she’s incredibly authentic. She reacts bashfully to Paul Morley’s questions and speaks plainly, promoting the idea that yes, this goddess is also an American woman, a daughter of immigrants, and a person with conviction and determination. Her approachability is cemented by a crucial interview moment before “Slave to the Rhythm” where she brings up how she looks exactly like her Nigerian grandfather and acts like him, too. “Do you act all the time?,” Morley asks. “Not all the time, no,” Jones responds, before the stirring action of the song kicks back up again.
This contrast — Grace Jones as deity, Grace Jones as human — is what makes the experience of Slave to the Rhythm so memorable. She and Horn proved that you didn’t need power ballads, candy-coated melodies, or a digestible image to be a successful vehicle for pop music. You don’t even have to sing on every track.
Slave to the Rhythm instead relies on the audience’s imagination to determine who Grace Jones really is. The album’s immersive energy and Jones’ unmistakable persona influenced everything from Beyoncé’s enigmatic works to Lady Gaga’s ever-contrasting identies. And even in the album’s most menacing hues, right around the corner is a chord change that sends in a rush of brightness. It’s Horn’s astounding composition, yes, but it’s also Grace Jones every time — she is both devil and savior, and we are bound to her rhythm.
The Goddess and Her Prophet: Grace Jones, Trevor Horn, and Slave to the Rhythm
Paolo Ragusa
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