Workin' Overtime

Album: Workin' Overtime (1989)
Charted: 32
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Songfacts®:

  • Diana Ross moved deftly into the disco era with the hits "Upside Down" and "I'm Coming Out." Those songs were both written and produced by Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards of Chic.

    "Workin' Overtime" is the title track to her 1989 album, which Nile Rodgers returned to produce. By this time, the new jack swing sound was all the rage, and the song presses all those buttons. Rodgers and Ross didn't do nearly as well in this milieu - the song and album both flopped.
  • Workin' Overtime was the first album Diana Ross released after returning to Motown Records in 1988 after seven years with RCA. They gave it a big promotional push and commissioned a music video, but dance music at the time was dominated by young artists, and Ross couldn't break through.
  • Nile Rodgers wrote this song with Christopher Max, a singer who might be best known for singing the Soul Glo jingle, which Rodgers wrote, in the movie Coming To America.
  • When Ross promoted this song, she explained that it was for her fans. "I'm working overtime for you," she explained.

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