Let's Groove

Earth, Wind & Fire were working on Raise!, their eleventh studio album, when disco music faced a severe backlash across 1979 and the early 1980s. Rather than abandon the sound, Maurice White decided to revive the disco elements from the band's previous works. He brought in guitarist Roland Bautista and began co-writing a song with Wanda Vaughn of the Emotions and her husband Wayne Vaughn, one that reflected the emerging electronic sound of the decade. The result was "Let's Groove," produced by White for Kalimba Productions and released in 1981 as the album's first single.

The track opened with a robotic-sounding vocoder riff and ran for five minutes and thirty nine seconds, blending post-disco, pop and funk with synthesizers, keyboards and live electric guitars. It gave listeners a grittier version of the band for the new decade, with horn blasts supplied by the Brecker Brothers.

Commercially the single was the band's highest-charting release in various territories. It reached number three in the United States, their seventh and last top 10 hit there, and spent eight weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart into early 1982. It sold over a million copies in the US, earned a gold certification, and received a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Vocal Performance by a Duo or Group.