THE 1000 BEST SONGS IN THE WORLD EVER.

612-Parliament-Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker.)

1976-Has never charted in the UK.

Best Bit-At 3.57. If you ever attend a George Clinton concert, you will always hear the phrase ‘Give Up the Funk’ chanted, sometimes hundreds of times, starting with the audience imploring the band to take to the stage.

George Edward Clinton was born on July 22nd, 1941, in Kannapolis, North Carolina, United States, alongside James Brown, and Sly Stone, he is cited as one of the foremost innovators of ‘Funk’ music. Clinton’s first foray in to music was when forming a ‘Doo-Wop’ group in 1955 called ‘The Parliaments,’ inspired by Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers. The Parliaments are best remembered for their 1967 Billboard Number 20 hit (‘I Wanna) Testify,’ co-written by Clinton.

In order to capitalise on the success of (‘I Wanna) Testify,’ Clinton put together a group of touring musicians, but due to a contractual dispute he lost the rights to the name ‘The Parliaments,’ so reformed, using the name ‘Funkadelic'(see also best songs 340 and 26.) As the amount of newly recruited musicians grew, Clinton decided to form a second group to run concurrently alongside ‘Funkadelic,’ and this was the formation of ‘Parliament'(see also best songs 143.)

‘Tear the Roof off the Sucker’ is taken from Parliament’s fourth studio Album ‘Mothership Connection’ from 1975, and was co-written by Clinton, his long time associate Jerome Brailey, and Bootsy Collins (see also best songs 850 and 88,) who had recently joined the band, after a stint playing with James Brown. ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine called the Album,’A parody of modern funk, unlike the Ohio Players, or Commodores, the group refuse to play it straight, instead Clinton spews his jive, conceived from some cosmic funk vision.’ George Clinton has said,’I was a big fan of ‘Star Trek,’so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown type grooves, but with street talk, and ghetto slang.’

‘You’ve got a real type of thing going down, gettin’ down, there’s a whole lot of rhythm going round.’