About The Song
“Give It Up” is a song by American disco and funk band KC and the Sunshine Band, although it was simply credited as KC in many markets, including the United States.
Harry Wayne Casey, frontman of KC & The Sunshine Band, wrote this song with the singer Deborah Carter, who provides backup vocals. In the song, Casey sings:
Everybody wants you
Everybody wants your love
I would just like to make you mine all mine
He explained: “It seemed like everybody I always wanted to be with already had somebody else or wanted to be with somebody else. And I noticed how there’s always this one person, everybody wants them, and they don’t want anybody, and it would be real nice if you were mine. But you can’t have them. That sort of situation.
And then there’s the ones that are just so hard to get, that play all the games. So it’s, ‘Give it up, baby, give it up.’ Everybody looks and stares at this person, but they’re always like too good to give it up to anybody. They’re always just playing this little game.”
The group’s next album, All In A Night’s Work was released that summer, but Epic’s American unit showed little enthusiasm for it, especially since Casey couldn’t actively promote. The UK division of Epic, though, liked the song “Give It Up” and decided to push it as a single. It was a good call: The song went to #1 in the UK in August 1983, giving KC & The Sunshine Band their only British chart-topper.
Epic in the US still weren’t interested, so Casey released the track on his own label, Meca, credited to just KC. One by one, radio stations took notice and added it to their playlists. When it became clear there was no lasting disco stigma, most pop stations came on board, and listener response was huge. The song peaked at #18 in March 1984, but the song was far more popular than that chart position indicates because it was added to playlists gradually instead of all at once. It also aged well: on Spotify, it is the most popular KC & The Sunshine Band song, with well over 100 million streams.
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