Car Wash (song)

Infobox Single
Name = Car Wash


Artist = Rose Royce
from Album =
B-side =
Released = 1976
Format = 7" vinyl
Recorded =
Genre = Disco, funk
Length = 3:20 (LP mix is 5:06)
Label = MCA
110 076
Writer = Norman Whitfield
Producer = Norman Whitfield
Certification = 2x Platinum (US)
Last single =
This single = "Car Wash" (1976)
Next single = "I Wanna Get Next to You" (1977)
Misc = Infobox Single
Name = Car Wash


Artist = Christina Aguilera featuring Missy Elliott
from Album = Shark Tale: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack"
B-side =
Released = September 2004
Format = CD single
Recorded =
Genre = Pop, R&B, Pop rap, Blue eyed soul
Length =
Label = RCA
Writer = Norman Whitfield, Missy Elliott (uncredited)
Producer = Missy Elliott, Christina Aguilera, Ron Fair, T. Herzberg, C. Styles, Bang Out, Silence
Certification = Gold (ARIA), (RIANZ)
Misc = Extra chronology
Artist = Christina Aguilera
Type = singles
Last single = "The Voice Within"
(2003)
This single = "Car Wash"
(2004)
Next single = "Tilt Ya Head Back"
(2004)Extra chronology
Artist = Missy Elliott
Type = singles
Last single = "I'm Really Hot"
(2004)
This single = "Car Wash"
(2004)
Next single = "Lose Control"
(2005)

"Car Wash" is a 1976 number-one single by Rose Royce for MCA Records, the group's debut single and one of the most notable hits of the disco era. Written and produced by the band's main producer Norman Whitfield, "Car Wash", the theme of the 1976 film "Car Wash", was Rose Royce's most successful hit single. The song was later covered in 2004 by Christina Aguilera and Missy Elliott, who released their version as the single for the "Shark Tale" soundtrack.

ong information

Norman Whitfield, a former producer for Motown Records, had been commissioned to record the soundtrack album for "Car Wash" by director Michael Schultz. Although Whitfield did not want to take on the project, he did so because of both the money involved and the chance to give Rose Royce, a disco/funk band who left Motown with Whitfield in 1975, the exposure they needed to break into the mainstream. Unable to come up with a theme song for the film, inspiration finally struck Whitfield while playing a game of basketball, and he wrote his first draft of "Car Wash" on a bag of fried chicken he'd bought.

The resulting song set the mood and tone for the blaxploitation comedy film it was commissioned for. Rose Royce lead singer Rose Norwalt, with brief assistance from guitarist Kanji Brown, paints a picture of a fun and easy-going car washing business, where everything is "always cool/and the boss don't mind sometimes if you act a fool."

"Car Wash's" soundtrack, a double album, was Rose Royce's debut LP, and the title track was their debut single. "Car Wash" sold two million copies, and was a number one hit on both the Billboard pop and R&B charts in the United States and a top ten hit in the United Kingdom. The song held the number-one spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for one week, from January 22, 1977 to January 29, replacing "I Wish" by Stevie Wonder, and replaced by "Torn Between Two Lovers" by Mary MacGregor. The "Car Wash" soundtrack album, entirely recorded by Rose Royce and Whitfield, spawned two more hit singles: "I Wanna Get Next to You" and "I'm Going Down" (later covered in 1994 by Mary J. Blige).

The original Rose Royce version of "Car Wash" is one of the most sampled songs in history, not for its main instrumentation, but for its introductory section. The song opens with a series of hand claps, which have been sampled many times for both hip hop and R&B songs from the 1980s on. It was also re-released as a double A-side single with "Is It Love You're After?" in 1988 in the UK, peaking at #20.

Covers

In 2004, pop singer Christina Aguilera and rapper/singer Missy Elliott recorded a cover version of "Car Wash", giving the disco song a more modern pop feel and adding rapped verses from Elliott. In an interview Aguilera said, "...we had to change the key to be a little bit higher for my range. So we couldn't take the exact samples, but we brought in all these live instruments to recreate kind of this old, old classic, soulful feel and sound...."

"Car Wash" was the only single from the soundtrack to DreamWorks' computer animated film "Shark Tale". Their version was supported with a music video, featuring Aguilera and Elliott as animated fish similar to those in the film. Aguilera and Elliott's cover of "Car Wash" missed the U.S. Billboard Top 40, peaking at number sixty-three, while becoming a top five hit in the United Kingdom and became the 48th best selling single in the United Kingdom of 2004 with sales of over 100,000 copies, despite only being released in late November.

In this context, the "car wash" the song refers to would be the place where Oscar (the main protagonist, voiced by Will Smith) works, where large sea animals who behave like cars are washed in the same manner.

Charts

Rose Royce

Christina Aguilera

ee also

* Hot 100 No. 1 Hits of 1977 (USA)