Ring My Bell

Anita Ward was working as a substitute teacher in Memphis when she went into the studio to record "Ring My Bell", a disco track written by Frederick Knight, a musician who had found modest success in the early 1970s with Stax Records. Knight had originally penned the song for eleven-year-old Stacy Lattisaw, imagining it as a teenybopper number about children chatting on the telephone. When Lattisaw signed with a different label, Ward was asked to sing it instead, and the song became her only major hit.

The record stood out for its use of the Synare electronic drum, which played a decaying high-pitched tom tone on the first beat of every bar, along with chimes. The lyrics concerned a woman encouraging her partner to relax with her after a hard day at work. The line "You can ring my bell" was later described as sexually suggestive, though Knight said he had deliberately avoided overly suggestive lyrics, wanting to project a clean-cut image for Ward.

In June 1979 the song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100, the Disco Top 80 chart and the Soul Singles chart, and it also topped the UK singles chart. Ward's popularity with the record brought her a nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 1980 Grammy Awards.