I'm Your Boogie Man

Album: Part 3 (1976)
Charted: 41 1
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by KC & The Sunshine Band bassist-producer Richard Finch and frontman Harry Wayne Casey, The "boogie" of the title is in the sense of dancing, shaking your booty, and getting down, not with the scary kind of "boogie man." In a Songfacts interview with Casey, he told the story:

    "'I'm Your Boogie Man,' in the initial writing of it I called it 'I'll Be A Son Of A Gun':

    I'll be a son of a gun
    Look what you've done


    Then I went back and 'I'm Your Boogie Man' came into my head because I was thinking about how disc jockeys were always there on the radio. Like it says:

    Early morning
    Late afternoon
    Or at midnight
    It's never too soon
    I'm your Boogie Man


    It's taking the theme of the disc jockey being the one that's there for you all the time, no matter when. So it was as if I was a disc jockey, I'm the Boogie Man. Like if you call in and want to hear a certain song, or talk about what was going on in your life, I'm your Boogie Man. And of course I put in 'turn me on,' but that could also mean turned on the radio."
  • A specific DJ who influenced this song was Robert W. Walker at Y-100 in Miami, Florida, who was the first to give the group's hit single "Get Down Tonight" airplay. So Walker "was the Boogie Man that brought all the funk and the good feeling and the vibes to the people every morning," Rick Finch told Songfacts.
  • Some DJs got offended after taking this song the wrong way. In the '70s, "boogie man" was sometimes interpreted as a racial insult to a black man. At least one DJ, Frankie Crocker at WBLS in New York, canceled an interview with the group upon learning they were white. They were actually an integrated band, with Finch and Casey the only white members.
  • This was the fourth of five US #1 hits for KC & The Sunshine Band, who created a funky R&B sound with their first hit "Get Down Tonight" and used that as a template for more hits.
  • This was used in trailers for the Scary Movie franchise, which began in 2000. Other films to use this song include:

    The Curse Of Bridge Hollow (2022)
    Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)
    The House I Live In (2012)
    Watchmen (2009)
    Superbad(2007)
    Roll Bounce (2005)
    Gun Shy (2000)
    The People Vs. Larry Flynt (1996)
    The Last Supper (1995)

    TV uses include:

    Scandal ("I'm Just A Bill" - 2015)
    My Name Is Earl ("Boogeyman" - 2006)
    Malcolm In The Middle ("Rollerskates" - 2000)
  • White Zombie did a sinister cover of this song for the 1996 film The Crow: City of Angels. The group also included the song on their album Supersexy Swingin' Sounds. Their version was also used on the TV shows Daria ("Pierce Me" - 1998) and 666 Park Avenue ("A Crowd Of Demons" - 2012).
  • Prior to the disco era, if someone in the music world claimed to be a boogie man, it would likely conjure an image of a piano player banging out a boogie-woogie rhythm rather than a DJ spinning out dance hits on the radio. The rolling eight-to-the-bar rhythm became popular in blues music of the 1920s and influenced other musical genres in the ensuing decades. The Andrews Sisters paid tribute to the style with "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" in 1941 and Bill Haley & His Comets sang about the origins of the boogie-woogie beat in the 1955 hit "Birth Of The Boogie." Lots of similarly titled tunes popped up on the Hot 100 until a new brand of boogie took hold with the rise of disco music when the word became synonymous with dancing on hits like "Boogie Fever" and "Boogie Nights."
  • On Part 3, the band's fourth studio album, this track segues into "Keep It Comin' Love," which was also their next single.

    "That was intentionally done," Casey explained of the track placement in The Billboard Book Of Number One Hits. "It worked real well. I guess that was just an extension of saying, 'I'm your boogie man, keep it coming.' A lot of people start something, and when it gets to the point where they would hit - they stop."

Comments: 2

  • Jeannie K from NycI love KC & the Sunshine Band and I would like to know what the reference, "rubber ball" means in the song, I'm Your Boogey Man.
  • Boogie Man’s Woman from New Mexico, UsaThe Rob Zombie version of this song has become the musical representation of the love my man and I share. To us, the lyrics tell of a man who loves his woman so much that he will do anything for her. Like the boogeyman’s presence in folklore and cultures worldwide, he is always there, but this lyrical version is not scary. This is a man that will move mountains for the woman he loves. A man who wants only to support and please his partner. A man who can be counted on no matter what. That is MY boogie man.
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