What we can learn about clarity from Chic.

Put down that copy of Harvard Business Review.

Leave LinkedIn Learning for another day.

The best examples of world-class clarity are maybe hiding in the last place you might look.

Nile Rodgers’ back catalogue to be precise.

The driving force behind Chic knew a thing about communication and cut-through.

Even if he didn’t know it.

Many — if not most — of the band’s disco hits began with the chorus and/or the musical hook.

I Want Your Love. Good Times. Le Freak. Listen again and you’ll spot this immediately.

It’s wasn’t a unique approach.

Even the Beetles did it occasionally occasionally attended The School Of Chorus First and there are great examples fromAbba, Rolling Stones and Tears For Fears.

But it was a Chic trade mark.

When interviewed, Nile Rodgers suggests that this was a technique to achieve rapid memorability on the radio.

The radio being the trigger for the physical sale of a single.

The radio being a crowded place where everyone is trying to get noticed.

Sound familiar?

Putting the chorus first is a bit like revealing a punchline for a joke and then gradually introducing the set-up.

If it were a film this would be called a spoiler.

However, pop(ular) music is not like a film.

What you hear is what they want you to get.

And they want you to get it in the three minutes or so it takes for the single to play.

The Chic example is the musical version of ‘Tell ’em you’ll tell ’em. Tell ’em. And tell ’em you’ve told ‘em¨.

In other words, be blunt, up front. And repeat the bluntness.

This presentation advice is attributed to a turn of the century priest, who was explaining the structure of his sermons and I follow it…er…religiously.

Every presentation I make begins with me telling the audience, quite explicitly, what I want them to take from it.

In this way, providing the presentation is good of course, I couldn’t be more clear.

I risk repeating myself but at least I try to make the point.

Clarity, like a hit single, is hard to create.

Confusion, like a rambling album track, is much easier.

(Fades.)