1983 · Behind the Songs
For her 1983 album Ross, Diana Ross teamed with Steely Dan’s producer and an all-star session band — and came away with a single that cracked the U.S. top forty and went top ten in Norway.
By 1983, Diana Ross had nothing left to prove and everything left to try. She had conquered Motown, conquered disco, and conquered the pop charts with diana; she had moved to RCA and scored with “Muscles” and “Why Do Fools Fall in Love.” For her next album, Ross, she made one of the most intriguing choices of her career: she hired Gary Katz, the producer best known for his meticulous work with Steely Dan, to helm the sessions. The lead single, “Pieces of Ice,” released June 17, 1983, was the result — a cool, polished pop record with a rock session band behind it, and one of the most distinctive singles Ross ever released.
Katz was an inspired pick. As Steely Dan’s producer, he had built a reputation for obsessive craftsmanship — endless takes, the best musicians in Los Angeles, arrangements with not a note out of place. Bringing that sensibility to Diana Ross was a gamble: her greatest records had thrived on warmth and spontaneity, not studio perfectionism. But “Pieces of Ice” suggests the gamble paid off, at least artistically. The track is sleek and controlled, with a steely sheen that suits its title, and Ross sounds invigorated by the precision around her — a singer rising to meet a new kind of challenge.
The song itself came from Marc Jordan and John Capek, a pair of songwriters with a gift for sophisticated pop. “Pieces of Ice” is, on its face, a breakup song — a relationship fracturing into cold, glittering fragments — but Jordan and Capek gave it an unusual melodic architecture, all elegant angles and unexpected turns. It is the kind of song that rewards a precise singer, and Ross, who could be precise when she wanted to be, delivers one of her most controlled vocal performances of the decade.
A rock band behind a pop diva
If the production was Steely Dan-adjacent, the personnel certainly was. The musicians on “Pieces of Ice” read like a rock hall of fame induction list: Joe Walsh and Larry Carlton on guitars, Jeff Porcaro on drums, Greg Phillinganes on keyboards and bass, and Jim Horn on saxophone and flute. Walsh — the Eagles’ wild man — and Carlton — the session legend behind countless Steely Dan solos — trading guitar parts behind Diana Ross is one of those studio matchups that sounds improbable until you hear it work. Porcaro’s drumming gives the track its immaculate pulse, Phillinganes’s keyboards add the glossy textures, and Horn’s saxophone and flute provide the color.
There is a particular pleasure in hearing rock royalty play pop with total commitment. Nobody is coasting; Walsh’s guitar has real bite, Carlton’s lines are characteristically elegant, and the rhythm section locks in with session-musician telepathy. For Ross, who had spent the seventies working primarily with R&B and disco musicians, it was a new sonic world — cooler, drier, more angular. She adapted beautifully, finding a clipped, almost conversational delivery that sits inside the track’s icy groove rather than floating above it.
The single and its many versions
“Pieces of Ice” was released as the first single from Ross on RCA, and the label gave it the full treatment. The seven-inch ran three minutes and fifty-seven seconds; the album version stretched to four minutes and fifty-eight seconds; and the twelve-inch extended to seven minutes and nineteen seconds, with an instrumental version as the B-side on the American twelve-inch. In the vinyl era, that kind of versioning was a statement of confidence — a signal that the label believed the track could work on pop radio, on R&B radio, and in the clubs, each in its own form.
The charts told a respectable story with one standout chapter. In the United States, the single reached number 31 on the Hot 100 and number 15 on the soul chart — solid numbers that confirmed Ross’s continued relevance in a rapidly changing pop landscape. In the United Kingdom, it peaked at number 46. But in Norway, “Pieces of Ice” went all the way to number 8, its highest chart position anywhere — a reminder that hits are local, and that a record can be a smash in one country and a footnote in another. For Ross, whose global career had always had these regional variations, it was business as usual.
The video: a first
The music video for “Pieces of Ice” deserves its own paragraph, because it marked a milestone: directed by Bob Giraldi — the filmmaker behind Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” — it featured Ross in a red bodysuit and was her first video to include choreography. In 1983, the music video was rapidly becoming as important as the single itself, and Ross, who had always understood visual presentation, was adapting to the new medium. The Giraldi video gave “Pieces of Ice” a striking visual identity — cool, stylized, and modern — that matched the record’s sonic sheen. It is a time capsule of the early MTV era, when established stars were learning a new language in real time.
An unexpected literary afterlife
Here is the strangest chapter of the “Pieces of Ice” story: the song inspired a children’s book author. Timothy Bellavia, a writer and illustrator, was so taken with the song that he created a graphic novel titled Pieces of Ice, which was nominated for a 2009 Lambda Literary Award. It is one of the most unusual legacies any pop single can claim — a top-forty hit that became, decades later, the seed of a work of children’s literature. Bellavia’s book stands as proof that songs travel in ways their makers can never predict, finding new meanings in new contexts long after the charts have moved on.
In Ross’s catalog, “Pieces of Ice” occupies a distinctive niche: the cool, Katz-produced experiment between the R&B warmth of Silk Electric and the pop maximalism that would follow. It is not her most famous single, not her biggest hit, not the one the retrospectives lead with. But it might be one of her most interesting — a record where one of pop’s greatest voices met one of rock’s greatest producers and a band of session legends, and everybody played it straight. The result is a small, glittering, slightly chilly masterpiece.
What to listen for
Start with the twelve-inch if you can find it: the extended mix gives the session players room to stretch, and you can hear Walsh and Carlton’s guitars conversing in a way the single edit only suggests. Listen to Porcaro’s drumming — the man was a metronome with soul, and his feel is the track’s foundation. Notice Phillinganes’s keyboard textures, all glass and chrome, and Horn’s flute flickering at the edges. And then Ross herself: clipped, cool, and completely in control, singing about heartbreak like someone examining ice crystals — beautiful, precise, and just a little dangerous to touch.