1979 · Behind the Songs
Written and produced by Nickolas Ashford & Valerie Simpson, the 1979 title track gave Diana Ross a number-one dance hit and a top-twenty pop single — and a song that drag queens and remixers are still lifting four decades later.
There are songs you hear, and there are songs you obey. “The Boss” belongs firmly in the second category. From its opening bars — a fanfare of strings and rhythm that sounds like a curtain going up — it announces that Diana Ross is in charge here, and it never lets up for three minutes and fifty-two seconds. Written and produced by Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson, released as a single on May 22, 1979, a day before the album of the same name, it became one of the defining disco records of Ross’s career: number one on the dance chart, number nineteen on the Hot 100, and a permanent fixture in the sets of DJs, drag performers, and remixers ever since.
Ashford & Simpson were the ideal partners for this moment. The husband-and-wife team had been writing and producing for Motown since the late sixties — their credits included “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” the duet that had helped launch Ross’s solo career — and they understood her voice better than almost anyone. Where other producers treated Ross as a pop singer who could handle soul, Ashford & Simpson treated her as a soul singer who could handle anything. The Boss, the album, was their full-length statement on the subject: a disco-era record built around her authority, with the title track as its thesis.
The timing was precise. Disco was at its commercial peak in the spring of 1979, and Ross — who had flirted with the dance floor on “Love Hangover” three years earlier — was ready to commit fully. “The Boss” was the album’s first single, backed with “I’m in the World,” and it arrived with everything the moment demanded: orchestral sweep, a relentless four-on-the-floor pulse, and a vocal performance that manages to be both commanding and playful. Ross does not just sing the lyric; she inhabits the title, and you believe her.
The chart journey
The single’s American performance was a textbook disco success story. It reached number 19 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 12 on the Hot Soul Singles chart, but its real triumph was on the dance floor: “The Boss” went to number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart, confirming what DJs already knew. It also finished the year at number 97 on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 — a modest placement that undersells how ubiquitous the record felt in clubs that summer. Cash Box had it at number 21.
Internationally, the record did solid business. In the United Kingdom, it debuted at number 64 on July 21, 1979, peaked at number 40 on August 4, and spent seven weeks on the chart. In Canada, it reached number 48 on the RPM Top Singles, topped the Adult Contemporary chart at number one, and hit number 8 on the Dance/Urban chart. The Canadian AC number one is a telling detail: “The Boss” was not just a club record; it was a song with enough melodic substance to cross over to mainstream radio audiences.
Who’s on the record
One of the pleasures of “The Boss” is how much of a family affair it is. The background vocals feature Nickolas Ashford and Valerie Simpson themselves, singing behind their star — the songwriters literally backing up their singer — alongside Maxine and Julia Waters, the sisters whose voices graced countless seventies sessions. There is something touching about that lineup: the architects of the song standing in the chorus, supporting the woman they wrote it for. It gives the record a warmth that pure studio professionalism could never provide.
Ross’s lead vocal is the main event, and it is a masterclass in disco singing. The genre is often caricatured as requiring nothing but a beat and a smile, but the great disco vocals — and this is one of them — demand precision, stamina, and personality. Ross delivers all three, riding Ashford & Simpson’s surging arrangement with total confidence. She makes authority sound joyful, which is the whole trick of the song: being the boss, in her hands, is not about power over others but about command of the moment.
Four decades of second acts
Few disco records have been recycled as lovingly as “The Boss.” In 1993, David Morales — one of the defining remixers of the house era — reworked it for Diana Extended: The Remixes, introducing the song to a generation that had been in diapers in 1979. Almighty Records gave it the full hi-NRG treatment in 2009. And in 2019, Eric Kupper’s “The Boss 2019” remix took the song to number one on the U.S. Dance Club Songs chart — a full forty years after the original topped the dance chart. How many records can claim two separate dance-chart number ones, four decades apart? Almost none.
The song also became a staple of drag culture, where its themes of command and glamour made it a natural. It was featured as a lip-sync song on RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars in both season 3 and season 11 — a rare double honor that speaks to the track’s enduring theatrical power. Other artists kept finding it too: the Braxtons took it to number one on the U.S. dance chart in 1997 with a version produced by Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez and Louie Vega; Kristine W did the same in 2008; and Whitney Houston performed it live during her 1997–98 shows, a nod from one diva to another. “The Boss” turned out to be less a single than a renewable resource.
What to listen for
Start at the beginning: that orchestral opening, all strings and anticipation, before the rhythm section kicks in and Ross enters like she owns the building. Listen to the interplay between her lead and the background vocals — Ashford, Simpson, and the Waters sisters answering her, egging her on, building a call-and-response that feels like a coronation. Notice how the arrangement keeps escalating: each chorus is bigger than the last, each instrumental break more insistent. And pay attention to Ross’s phrasing on the title word itself — she does not just sing “boss,” she pronounces it, savors it, turns it into a three-syllable event. Forty-plus years later, it still sounds like an order you are happy to follow.