1981 · Behind the Songs
Never released as a single, never sent to radio, never given a video — “Fate” sat quietly as track eight on What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me. Yet its groove refused to stay buried: it resurfaced on a remix collection, then powered one of the biggest dance records of the late nineties.
Some songs arrive with trumpets. They are announced months in advance, shipped to radio, pressed into seven-inch singles, and aimed squarely at the charts. And then there are songs like “Fate.” When Chaka Khan released her third solo album, What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me, on April 15, 1981, “Fate” was simply one of nine tracks — tucked between “Sleep on It” and a reprise of “I Know You, I Live You,” three minutes and fourteen seconds of sleek post-disco funk that Warner Bros. never bothered to release as a single. Nobody at the label seems to have thought it was special. History disagreed. Within two decades, that overlooked album cut had been remixed, compiled, and sampled into records that reached millions of listeners who had never heard the original — a second life more vivid than many actual hit singles ever get.
The album it came from was a pivotal one. Produced once again by Arif Mardin, What Cha’ Gonna Do for Me arrived at a moment when Khan was firmly establishing her identity apart from Rufus, the band that had made her famous. The record climbed to number 53 on the Billboard 200 and number 3 on the R&B albums chart, and it was eventually certified gold. Its title track went to number one on the R&B chart (while stalling at number 53 on the Hot 100), and the Stevie Wonder cover “We Can Work It Out” reached number 34 on the R&B chart. “Fate” was not among the chosen singles — not the first, not the second, not even the later ones like “Any Old Sunday.” It was, by every commercial measure of 1981, filler. But Mardin and Khan did not record filler; they recorded album tracks with the same care as singles, and “Fate” is the proof.
The song was written by Dominic King and Frank Musker, a songwriting partnership whose polished, groove-conscious compositions fit Mardin’s sophisticated R&B aesthetic like a glove. On paper, “Fate” is a meditation on inevitability — the idea that some connections are written in the stars and no amount of running can outpace them. In Khan’s hands, though, it becomes something less resigned and more celebratory: she sings about destiny the way other singers sing about a Friday night, with a strut in her phrasing that turns acceptance into triumph. It is a classic Chaka Khan trick — taking material that could feel heavy and making it move.
A studio full of ringers
Part of what makes “Fate” snap is the personnel. Mardin assembled a murderers’ row of session players for the album: drummer Steve Ferrone, bassist Anthony Jackson, guitarists David Williams and Hamish Stuart, synthesizer players Robbie Buchanan and David “Hawk” Wolinski, and saxophonist David Sanborn. The background vocals read like a roll call of R&B royalty — Cissy Houston, Luther Vandross, Will Lee, Hamish Stuart, and, remarkably, a teenage Whitney Houston, still years away from her own solo debut. The Waters family singers were there too. This was not a singer cutting corners between tours; this was a flagship Warner Bros. session with the best musicians money could buy, and you can hear the confidence in every bar. Ferrone’s drumming is crisp and unhurried, Jackson’s bass lines coil and release, and the synthesizers add a glossy modern sheen without smothering the funk.
Listen closely and you can hear the exact moment when R&B was changing clothes. Recorded in 1980 and released in 1981, “Fate” sits on the fault line between the orchestral disco-soul of the late seventies and the leaner, synth-driven funk that would define the eighties. Mardin, who had produced Khan’s first two solo albums, understood that transition intuitively. The track keeps one foot in the lush, harmony-rich world of “I’m Every Woman” while stepping decisively toward the sharper sound that would soon explode on I Feel for You. It is, in retrospect, a bridge record — and bridges are often more interesting than the land on either side.
The afterlife: remixes, compilations, and a French house anthem
“Fate” might have remained a crate-diggers’ secret forever if DJs had not kept finding it. In 1989, the song was given an official second wind when the “Fate (David Shaw & Winston Jones Remix)” — running five minutes and thirty-eight seconds — appeared on Life Is a Dance: The Remix Project, a collection that reworked highlights from Khan’s catalog for the club generation. Suddenly the track had a new context: not a deep cut on a 1981 LP, but a contemporary dance record. Compilations followed, with “Fate” turning up on anthologies like The Very Best of 100 R&B Classics and 100 Hits Disco, each placement introducing it to listeners who had missed it the first time.
Then came the sample that changed everything. In 1998, the French house trio Stardust — Thomas Bangalter, Alan Braxe, and vocalist Benjamin Diamond — built their debut single “Music Sounds Better with You” around a loop from “Fate.” The result was a global phenomenon: the single reached number two in the United Kingdom and topped the U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart, becoming one of the defining records of the French house movement. Millions of people danced to Chaka Khan’s groove without necessarily knowing it was hers. The sample gave “Fate” a kind of immortality that no chart position in 1981 could have provided — it embedded the song’s DNA into the architecture of modern dance music.
It did not stop there. In 2014, Pitbull sampled “Fate” on “Time of Our Lives” featuring Ne-Yo, carrying the groove onto contemporary pop radio. The following year, producer Statik Selektah flipped it again for “Beautiful Life,” featuring Action Bronson and Joey Bada$$, proving the track’s bones were sturdy enough for hip-hop as well as house. Few album cuts from 1981 can claim to have been reimagined across three decades and three genres. “Fate” can.
What to listen for
Play the original today and notice how economical it is. There is no wasted motion: the guitar figure that opens the track is the same one Stardust would loop seventeen years later, and it hooks you within seconds. Khan’s vocal is a masterclass in restraint — she never oversings, never reaches for a glory note the song does not need. Instead, she rides the groove, slipping slightly behind the beat in the verses and snapping back into lockstep for the chorus. It is the sound of a singer who trusts the track completely. Behind her, the backing vocalists — including Vandross and the young Whitney Houston — add lift without clutter, and Sanborn’s saxophone flickers at the edges like neon.
“Fate” is ultimately a story about patience. The song waited: through the eighties, through the remix era, through the birth of sampling culture, until the world caught up with what Arif Mardin’s session players had laid down in 1980. Not every great record needs to be a hit on arrival. Some of them just need time — and a groove too good to stay buried.