“They believed that if you learn the song or even hear it before you record it, it's going to sound rehearsed”: Kathy Sledge on why producers Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards didn’t play We Are Family to Sister Sledge right up until they recorded it

Sister Sledge.

Different producers have different ways of ensuring that they get the best possible take out of the singers that they record, and for Chic’s Nile Rodgers and Bernard Edwards, it seems that one of their strategies was to keep the song from the artist for as long as possible.

The news comes via Kathy Sledge, founding member of Sister Sledge, whose greatest hits were written and produced by the Rodgers/Edwards dream team. Of these, few are better known than the iconic We Are Family, but Sledge admits that she and her sisters knew very little about it before stepping into the vocal booth.