29 October, 1980.

If I’m not very much mistaken, Friday qualifies as a good enough reason to celebrate doesn’t it? Of course it does. We made it through the week folks. Hurrah! Add to that the fact that I break up today for ten days of no work, well, that Hurrah just got a little bit sweeter.

This was the first single released from Kool & The Gang’s 1980 album Celebrate! with the initial concept coming from the group’s saxophone player Ronald Bell, also known as Khalis Bayyan. The inspiration came after reading a passage in the Koran describing the creation of Adam.

The mention of angels singing and praising, prompted Bell to write the basic chords and lyrics for what would become their most enduring song of all time. Let’s face it, we’ve all been to birthday parties, or weddings, or any kind of party, where this has been played at some point during the evening – it’s a floor filler!

On its release the song became a global hit, reaching the top ten in eight countries worldwide including number one in Canada, New Zealand and the US – where it gave them their first number one and topped pretty much every chart going there at the time. Here in the UK it spent thirteen weeks on the chart and peaked at number seven.