Review: “I Feel For You” by Chaka Khan (CD, 1984)

Today’s Pop Rescue from an uncertain fate, is 1984’s I Feel For You – the fifth album by American singer Chaka Khan. Will this album give you the Feels, or should you ch-ch-ch-chuck it away? Read on…

Chaka Khan - I Feel For You (1984) album — Chaka Khan – I Feel For You (1984) album

This 10 track CD opens with the mysterious and breathy intro of second single This Is My Night. Some lovely synths and drum machines welcome us as we head to Chaka Khan on the mic. The vocals do seem a bit buried in the chorus by the synths unfortunately, and that seems to detract from what might have sounded catchy. Despite this, there’s some fun vocal samples, and it’s musically a nice start to the album but sadly, the track failed to repeat the success of the first single, giving Chaka a moderate UK hit at #14.

Then we’re on to the loved-up mid-tempo track, Stronger Than Before. This track allows us to hear the warmth in Chaka’s voice and harmonies, occasionally throwing her the bigger note to hit. It’s catchier than the previous track and is essentially a nice gentle 80’s pop song, and was written by songwriting royalty Burt Bacharach and Carole Bayer Sager. The track was the album’s fifth single in some markets, but not the UK.

That leads on to My Love Is Alive and here we hear loads of vocal samples, and they work a treat, including the opening sequence featuring Chaka’s vocal ‘dah-dah dah-dah daaa-daaa’, which gives the track a playful start. The track bounces along nicely with a simple drum machine, and layers of synths and samples with lots of gaps in between to allow for the various instrument sounds and vocals to shine. Great track that should have been a single!

Next is third UK single Eye To Eye which reached #16 in the chart. This one has some nice bass synths and lead guitars in the intro. Chaka’s vocals are wonderfully rich and soft here.

Then it’s La Flamme, which goes all in on the record scratches, bursts of dramatic synth sounds, and vocal samples. Vocally this is quite fun, and it’s style sits well with the usage of the drama synths. The underlying track seems to bounce along regardless whilst Chaka really goes for it.

Next up is the lead single I Feel For You. This is of course a cover of the 1979 Prince track and it gave Chaka a huge hit, and fused together her sound with the iconic “Ch-ch-ch-chaka-chaka-chaka Khan” vocal line from Grandmaster Melle Mel, which is synonymous with Chaka’s name. The music VIPs don’t end there, and here we also have Stevie Wonder being iconic as usual on the harmonica. This powerful combination of Chaka, the sample and rapping, and Stevie’s flawless harmonica playing ensured that the single hit #1 in the UK, where it stayed for 3 weeks. It’s a brilliantly catchy fusion of sounds. Excellent work!

By contrast that’s followed by Hold Her, which opens with dreamy big vocals of Chaka at the start before switching to synths, drum machines, and repeated vocal samples that are almost used as percussion. Chaka takes the mic for the verse and she’s shining again in this bleeping and gurgling mid-tempo track. A guitar in the background works well as Chaka’s vocals grow, giving it a welcome slightly harder sound.

Next it’s fourth UK single Through The Fire, which takes us to a fairly textbook paint-by-numbers American love ballad – you can imagine the instruments and vocal style. Chaka’s vocals make what seems like light work of this. It does allow us to clearly hear her throw her vocal power and range around. Sadly the track stalled at #77.

Caught In The Act is next, and we’re treated to an almost growling synth, and a sort of synth pad from space. Chaka’s in a reflective mood here, and her voice is lower than usual, giving it a harder and more rock sound to it. She’s joined by a guitar and drums that help to add to this harder edginess.

The album closes with the rapid percussion of Chinatown, and this is loaded with synths and beats. Chaka’s vocals are rapid-fire here, and that makes it a little disorientating at times. The robotic synth is kind of fun, but the rest of it is sort of weird game show music with a dash of chaos.

Chaka Khan’s lead single ‘I Feel For You’ (1984).

Verdict

Over all, this album is a collection of tracks that give a fresh and exciting burst of early 1980’s sounds that punch through with Chaka’s vocal power.

There’s no escaping the iconic 80’s hit and title track I Feel For You as being a highlight of this album, but it’s not alone, as My Love Is Alive and Hold Her are also great tracks too. The album’s weak points are hardly weak at all, but ironically, Stronger Than Before is this, alongside La Flamme and the chaos of Chinatown.

It’s a fun album mostly, and would have sounded incredibly daring in 1984, but it enabled Chaka to have a #1 hit, and despite the rest of the singles failing to get close to that iconic track, it did well enough to keep her in the charts.

Give it a spin if you like your 80’s pop.

POP RESCUE ALBUM REVIEW RATING: 3 / 5
1984 UK ALBUM CHART PEAK: #15, certified Gold by the BPI.
POP RESCUE COST: £1.99 from a Discogs.com seller.

One thought on “Review: “I Feel For You” by Chaka Khan (CD, 1984)”

This is not an ‘Early’ 1980’s album, it was released late 1984 fitmly making this decidedly a midst of the 80’s album, 1984 is thee 5th yr of the 80’s so it is not early its the middle it sounds nowt like the early 80’s.

I would not agree with some of the assessment regarding this album, synths are only used sparingly regarding number of sound types used here, bass some leads here and there and odd portamento’s etc.

Most sounds on this album are Fairlight cmi, Emulator, Synclavier sampled such as orchestra stabs percussive stabs voice and vocal sampling and records and odd sounds, Sound sampling in music was not something new in late 1984 to british audiences, since 1981 a myriad of british producers and artists and bands utilized this sampling revolution, every one from Omd Dollar Human league Abc trever horn martin rushent steve levine mike mansfield malcolm mcclaren and the early Stock aiken waterman tracks by hazell dean devine dead or alive etc etc used it to highly creative progressive effect.

Chaka’s album was a catching up to modern times american attempt at what they had previously been average at best at, and Very resistant too, and that was good sturdy creative polished sample based electronic music.

they did what the uk did two yrs earlier with Malcolm Mcclaren’s Trevor horn produced world supreme team fronted project buffalo gals, and utilised the emerged hip hop rap genre married to hi technology, there was a rare glimpse in the US in Mid 82 with ‘the message’ but at that time along with preludes sharon redd style of break dance esque music these styles were indeed very rare for the US and more common in the uk music scene.

So as the US caught up stylistically and technically in 1984 to everyone else’s music production techniques, having severly lagged somewhat behind generally speaking, Chaka’s album ‘I feel for you’ stands as a testament to great inventive timeless production and a cocophany of post modern sound engineering in musicwith the vocal and musician artists creative participation in making a sweeping change to the sound of commercial and popular music mid 80’s and beyond.

i did’nt hear any ‘wierd gameshow music’ asthetics anywhere on this album, it’s far more sophisticated and complex than that, todays music could use a leaf out of 1984’s book creatively speaking.

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Suza says:

May 30, 2025 at 7:10 pm

This is not an ‘Early’ 1980’s album, it was released late 1984 fitmly making this decidedly a midst of the 80’s album, 1984 is thee 5th yr of the 80’s so it is not early its the middle it sounds nowt like the early 80’s.

I would not agree with some of the assessment regarding this album, synths are only used sparingly regarding number of sound types used here, bass some leads here and there and odd portamento’s etc.

Most sounds on this album are Fairlight cmi, Emulator, Synclavier sampled such as orchestra stabs percussive stabs voice and vocal sampling and records and odd sounds, Sound sampling in music was not something new in late 1984 to british audiences, since 1981 a myriad of british producers and artists and bands utilized this sampling revolution, every one from Omd Dollar Human league Abc trever horn martin rushent steve levine mike mansfield malcolm mcclaren and the early Stock aiken waterman tracks by hazell dean devine dead or alive etc etc used it to highly creative progressive effect.

Chaka’s album was a catching up to modern times american attempt at what they had previously been average at best at, and Very resistant too, and that was good sturdy creative polished sample based electronic music.

they did what the uk did two yrs earlier with Malcolm Mcclaren’s Trevor horn produced world supreme team fronted project buffalo gals, and utilised the emerged hip hop rap genre married to hi technology, there was a rare glimpse in the US in Mid 82 with ‘the message’ but at that time along with preludes sharon redd style of break dance esque music these styles were indeed very rare for the US and more common in the uk music scene.

So as the US caught up stylistically and technically in 1984 to everyone else’s music production techniques, having severly lagged somewhat behind generally speaking, Chaka’s album ‘I feel for you’ stands as a testament to great inventive timeless production and a cocophany of post modern sound engineering in musicwith the vocal and musician artists creative participation in making a sweeping change to the sound of commercial and popular music mid 80’s and beyond.

i did’nt hear any ‘wierd gameshow music’ asthetics anywhere on this album, it’s far more sophisticated and complex than that, todays music could use a leaf out of 1984’s book creatively speaking.

LikeLike