Happy Anniversary: Chaka Khan, I Feel For You

31 years ago today, Chaka Khan released her fifth album, an effort which features a title track that’s become one of her signature tunes and remains the most successful studio album in her back catalog.

Although it’s neither her highest-charting R&B album nor her highest-charting pop album, all eyes – and, yes, ears – were on I Feel for You when it was first released. This had little to do with Chaka herself and everything to do with the fact that its title track was written by Prince, featured an introductory rap by Grandmaster Melle Mel, and had a harmonica solo from Stevie Wonder. It’s no wonder, then, that the song topped the R&B and dance charts, made it to #3 on the Billboard Hot 100, and ascended to the top spot on the UK Singles chart. Its success was out of this world, ultimately earning the 1985 Grammy for Best R&B Song, but here’s more to I Feel for You than just its title track: Khan also found success with the album’s subsequent singles, “This is My Night” and “Through the Fire.”

It’s also kind of fascinating to see just how many familiar names are listed in the credits for the album: Steve Ferrone, Steve Lukather, Robbie Buchanan, Michael Sembello, Hamish Stewart, Steve Porcaro, James Newton Howard, David Foster…the list goes on and on. And did we mention that a good chunk of the album is produced by Arif Mardin? There aren’t many better marks of pop quality than Mardin’s name.

To celebrate I Feel for You’s anniversary, we’re sharing the Spotify stream of the album, but there’s one little hiccup: the title track isn’t on there. You can probably guess why, but don’t worry about it, we’ve got a back door way of bringing you the song:

Give all of this music a spin, won’t you? We don’t want to say that it’s stronger than before, because that would just be shamelessly borrowing the title of one of the album’s songs, so we’ll just say that if you’ve ever liked I Feel for You, we’d be surprised if you didn’t still feel the same way.