Sister Sledge Star reveals why she waited 20 years to release a new song

Kathy Sledge has barely stopped making music since the age of 13, including with one of the most popular girl groups of all time, Sister Sledge.

The lead voice behind the mega-hit “We Are Family,” Sledge has been recording music for decades, but there was one song he “kept on the shelf” until he felt the world needed to hear it.

Sledge and his sisters, Kim, Debbie and Joni, who died in 2017, rose to fame in the late ’70s with songs like “Thinking of You” and “He’s the Greatest Dancer,” when the singer was just a teenager .

She eventually left what she describes as the “original girl group” in 1989 to try her hand at a solo career. Since then, Sledge has dabbled in a wide range of genres, but his new song, “Promise Me,” defies labeling, according to the superstar.

While you can’t put “Promise Me” in a box, it’s been sitting on the shelf until now, when Sledge decided the song’s message needed to be heard.

“I feel like I’m looking at the generations that are out there now and I think they want to embrace that nostalgic feeling of what it feels like to be warm and cozy and I think we’ve moved away from that a little bit,” Sledge. he said Newsweek.

“I actually wrote this song 20 years ago, but I revisited it … and shared it with my daughter Gabrielle and said, ‘you know what, Gabs? I feel like this song is like God wrote a love. song this is what the lyrics would do for this space we live in right now’.

“People are so alone. Like we’re in this huge ocean swimming alone.”

So the singer decided to release “Promise Me” in September.

“God’s timing is everything,” he said. “Even though I wrote it years ago, I think now is the time that it would be embraced in a way that it might not have been embraced years ago.”

Sledge is no stranger to using his music forever, after all, “We Are Family” is an enduring song of human connection, and a re-recording of the song released in the wake of 9/11 was the first charity single after the terrorist attacks of 2011. . Its music video was directed by Spike Lee and featured famous faces from Diana Ross to Macaulay Culkin. Producer Nile Rodgers, who wrote and produced the original song in 1979, had the idea to “start the healing process,” he said at the time.

The singer even wants Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to use the song in her campaign ahead of the November election.

“I think our country needs ‘We Are Family.’ It’s about time,” he said Newsweek. “I feel like we’ve been through a lot of upheaval lately and I think it’s time for our country to embrace it and there’s something in the ‘We are family’ message that can help that.”

“I support Kamala Harris. I think it’s the kind of song that helps us; and for our country to embrace,” he added.