Celebrate! is the twelfth studio album by American band Kool & the Gang. Released on September 29, 1980, the album reached No. 1 on the US R&B chart and #10 on the Billboard 200.[1] The album produced perhaps Kool & the Gang's most recognizable hit song, the #1 chart-topper, "Celebration", which still receives heavy play today over four decades later.[2]
Dennis Hunt of the Los Angeles Times called Celebration "the band's mostly excellent new album."[6]Robert Christgau of the Village Voice gave a C- grade saying "It says something for these funk pioneers that unlike James Brown, George Clinton, and the Ohio Players they've adapted painlessly, nay profitably, to disco: a number-one single leads their Deodato-produced album into the top ten. What it says is that their funk was as bland as you suspected."[5] With a 3 out of 5 stars review Amy Hanson of Allmusic found that "Celebrate itself marked the end of an era for Kool & the Gang, as the band would slip even farther from their funk roots and adopted dance grooves into the realms of smooth soul. But what a way to go!"[3]
