Kathy Sledge on allyship and LGBTQ anthem We Are Family: ‘I did the ad lib in one take – I’m proud of that!’

“It’s the gift that keeps on giving!” enthuses Kathy Sledge of Sister Sledge’s biggest song, ‘We Are Family’. The disco pop classic reached the top 10 on the US and UK singles charts in 1979; almost 45 years later, thanks to countless remixes and rereleases, it’s now a wedding dancefloor staple and a ‘found family’ anthem for the LGBTQ community.

First and foremost, though, it’s about the real-life Philadelphia-born sisters behind the song: Kathy, Debbie, Kim and also the late Joni, who passed away in 2017. “What it does is, it brings you together,” reflects Kathy of the song’s message of togetherness and support. “A sense of family, home, realness.”

The song was famously used in the gay-themed classic film The Birdcage, starring Robin Williams, and another Sister Sledge track, ‘Lost in Music’, memorably featured in the first episode of the second season of seminal HBO gay drama Looking.

Suffice to say, they’ve been embraced by the gays. As Attitude explains to Kathy in an interview to celebrate her Ally Award win at the 2024 Virgin Atlantic Attitude Awards, powered by Jaguar, queers are often inexplicably compelled by good quality pop music, of which the band’s seminal 1979 album We Are Family is choc-a-bloc. As well as the aforementioned songs, it contains ‘Thinking of You’ – “my favourite pop song ever”, says Kathy – and the sublime ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’.  

“At the end of the day, do you love each other? Yeah, of course” – Kathy on her sisters

“I always say, our song is ‘We Are Family’ – it was literally written about us – but our story was ‘Lost in Music’,” explains Kathy over Zoom. She and her sisters have been embroiled in various legal disputes over financial and trademark issues through the years. “Sometimes the magnitude of success – what I went through as the youngest, and singing all the songs, I dealt with jealousies, I dealt with lawsuits. Somewhere, we got lost.” (Kathy will be performing at the Attitude Awards as part of tribute group Sister Sledge ft. Kathy Sledge. Debbie, meanwhile, performs as part of tribute group Sister Sledge ft. Sledgendary, with daughter Camille Sledge, son David Sledge, nephew Thaddeus Sledge, and vocalist Tanya Ti-et.)

Here, Kathy discusses the band’s impact on the LGBTQ community (“to me, allyship means unity, passion”), offers a fascinating blind ranking of the band’s top hits and explains why she was a “real-life Hannah Montana” as a teen!

Are you exited to be getting the Ally Award?

“I’m thrilled. Very excited. I’m embracing it in a huge way. I’ve got to tell you – I just came home three days ago [from touring the UK]. But then we worked it out with my team, and I was like: ‘This might be the only reason I’d go back!’”

How has your relationship with your queer fans changed since the 70s?

“I wouldn’t say it’s changed. It’s grown, in a huge way. The first words that come to mind are ‘pure love’. That’s why the song is embraced. It’s so real. It’s from the heart. I sang it from the heart when I was 16. I wasn’t allowed to hear it until I recorded it! It’s crazy. That’s the way [producers] Nile Rogers and the late Bernard Edwards worked. They believed in spontaneity. To this day, I believe that’s why there’s always this newness to it. I learned it line by line, didn’t know how it was going to sound until the finished product; I did the ad lib in one take – I’m proud of that! I was singing my heart out. Ready to do more. But Nile and Bernard were like: ‘Nah, we got it!’ ‘We Are Family’ is real, and I think that’s why so many communities, like the LGBT community, have embraced it. It makes me proud to be the voice of that.”

Your songs are played at weddings, TV shows, they’ll be played at our event – it must feel incredible to have songs that have travelled like that!

“It’s amazing to me. What people don’t know is, way before ‘We Are Family’, I’d been singing for years with my sisters. We had a hit record there [in the UK] – you weren’t born yet! – called ‘Mama Never Told Me’. A little Jackson 5 bubble gum. I was 13. We played Zaire, Africa when I was 14. Rumble on the Jungle, which was huge. I got a chance to tour this world, and never really had a hit record at home in the US! I’d call myself a real-life Hannah Montana. I’d do these huge concerts, come home, get on a bus and go to school. Nobody believed I had records!”

And then ‘Frankie’ was a UK number one!

“I’m laughing with ‘Frankie’, because it was almost a fluke! The person that wrote it [Denise Eisenberg Rich] became a songwriter, but that was the first song she ever wrote and it became this huge hit! It was a folk song. I remember taking it to Nile, and he was like: ‘You’re kidding me, right?’ But he turned it around into this really cool… there’s almost a reggae vibe underneath, if you listen closely. We were all surprised it stayed on your charts as long as it did.”

Can you blind rank the following five songs – starting with ‘Frankie’?

“That’ll be five. If you really listen to the lyrics of ‘Frankie’ – and I love the writer! – they’re so elementary. ‘You walked me to the deli, and I said to myself we could have had twins!’ [Laughs]”

Next: ‘He’s the Greatest Dancer’.

“Three. The guitar is so sexy on that song. It’s just a vibe. Again, it keeps coming back, the guitar line alone. And then the storyline, I love.”

‘Lost in Music’?

“Believe it or not, it might be four. I love ‘Lost in Music’, but personally, and people don’t know my story, I don’t tell it a lot, but I was actually sued by my sisters for, like, 20 years. Some jealousy stuff. I always say, our song is ‘We Are Family’ – it was literally written about us – but our story was ‘Lost in Music’. Sometimes the magnitude of success – what I went through as the youngest, singing all the songs, I dealt with jealousies, I dealt with lawsuits. Somewhere, we got lost in music. I love the song, but if I think about it…”

It’s the symbolism.

“Very true. The symbolism.”

It maybe symbolises some of the downsides to the experience.

“It’s a whirlwind. If you think about it, we’re not the Waltons! And it’s interesting. Here we are under this magnifying glass, and we are family. The then-record company president was describing us to Nile: ‘You’ve got to meet these girls. You’ve got to write a song about them. They’re family. Whenever the come up to the label, they flock together like birds of a feather.’ So, they really took out their pens and wrote down these notes, and those were the lyrics – we were so close. Exceptionally close. And sometimes, the music got in the way. But it happens. At the end of the day, do you love each other? Yeah, of course. But maybe you may not be able to work together. And that’s OK.”

Our culture places so much emphasis on romantic and parent-child relationships, but friendships and sibling relationships can be just as romantic, passionate and painful as every other!

“It’s so true. It’s deep, because some people know my story, and sometimes in interviews they go: how does it feel to be sued by your sisters? Over the years, I was a deer in the headlights. … I never even saw that coming. But I think what I sometimes say, as you just said, is: ‘Can you imagine being in business with your brothers and sisters?’ It’s a lot! The dynamics are real. So sometimes, I’ll jokingly say when people ask me: ‘Yeah, yeah, whatever, I love them, but… Tell me about your family!’ When I say that, they’re like: ‘Oh my gosh. I couldn’t work with mine!’

When my siblings and I can’t even agree on a film to watch…

“It’s funny you should say that. At a very young age, one sister – God bless her, she’s not with us anymore – the journey was very demanding. I was feeling we would have been the closest sisters if we didn’t have music in the way. She liked being up front. The fact I sang everything, that was a problem. What I have learned is, we were always under this magnifying glass. We never got the chance to sometimes be the family we would have loved to have been. We are. But at the same time, the challenges we’ve had – add this to the equation, it wasn’t like our hit record was ‘What’s Love Got to Do with It’! It was ‘We Are Family’. So, so many people come to me and tell me what that song means to them. And in my own personal [experience], I had to go through so much. Being sued for years. Now we’re closer, at different times, but that’s another reason I love the song and feel the LGBTQ community and other communities embrace it so much. Because sometimes, we can’t choose our family. Sometimes we find each other, and unite.”

I’m guessing ‘We Are Family’ is number one?

“It’s a toss-up between that and ‘Thinking of You’. But… it’s number one for so many reasons.”

Why isn’t ‘Thinking of You’ number one?

“It is my favourite song. But ‘We Are Family’ means so much more to different people and is a statement.”

What LGBTQ pop icons have you met? Elton John?

“I love Elton. You know, we did a record with him! No one knows that. It’s called ‘This Town’. It’s such a long time ago! He gifted us with CD players! I went to see his show in Philadelphia and was waiting backstage. There was a lot going on. I said to myself: ‘I’ll see him another time.’ I look up and there’s this little guy waddling by. I’m like: ‘Elton? I’m Kathy Sledge of Sister Sledge.’ He goes, ‘of course!’ Comes over, tells me I look great, and gives me a fist bump! It was so endearing to me.”

How about Freddie Mercury?

“He has a special place in my heart. I never met him, but like everyone else, was reintroduced to him through Bohemian Rhapsody. What I loved about him is, he seemed to always know his purpose and his strength. It took me a lifetime to know that. I remember seeing the movie and bawling. The message that transcended that film through him is, he’s not here anymore, to complete all the things he wanted to do. I was in a very low place in my life when I watched. I was like, you are still here. Even though we go through our adversities, it was time for me to embrace the gift that I have. He always knew his gift. It took me a lifetime to know mine.”

Have you ever thought it would be cool to have a Sister Sledge biopic, film or documentary, or any sort of retrospective thing?

“I’m meeting about it now. I have been working on my Memoir of a Little Sister book. It talks about the stories and what it’s like to grow up under a magnifying glass as family. Represent ‘We Are Family’, and at the same time, have your own struggles. Then there’s a lot of fun stuff in there. But definitely, I’ve been approached about a documentary, and I’ve been approached about a film. I always say, it’s got to pull at your heartstrings and I think we all have stories to tell. Who knew Tina Turner was getting beat up in the back of a limo? Until you know our stories, until we all know each other’s stories, you can understand each other even more. There’s such a story behind ‘We Are Family’; why we were so close. Why we went through the ‘Lost in Music’ place in our lives. At the same time, I’d love to be able to relate to every family. Because it is in every family. No family’s perfect. At the same time, there are any five sides to the story. To understand the sister that loved being up front – Joni was gorgeous; she loved being up front – to understand her frustration with me always singing everything up front, you have to get inside the heart of the story.”

You’re roughly the same age as Madonna – have you ever crossed paths with her?

“She’s a little older than me! I remember I did this dance concert. She and her dancers were backstage. She told me she grew up listening to me! My dancers were like: ‘She just gave you some shade!’ I was like, it’s a compliment! What I love about her is the chutzpah. Give her anything, and she’ll do it.”

Back to the question of allyship – what’s your advice to someone who wants to be a better ally to LGBTQs, and especially LGBTQ people of colour?

“The first word is realness. I remember being asked a question once – ‘what do you feel about the LGBTQ community?’ I really answered this. ‘That’s like asking me: ‘What do you think about Black people? Or white people?’ I remember saying: ‘Ask me how I feel about a person. Then I can answer.’ Otherwise, we’re being judgemental. People are so judgemental. I can only answer if I know you. ‘Oh, I like Jamie! He’s cool!’ The advice I’d give is … there’s a sense of not just unity, it’s love. A deep love. … It’s here. I know this sounds very cliche. But it’s true. My best friend tells me: ‘You’re in the wrong business. You need to work for the Red Cross!’ I really feel like [my allyship] is from the heart. … The advice I’d give, is, not to be judgemental with anyone.”

Kathy’s new solo track ‘Promise Me’ is streaming now. The Attitude Awards issue 2024, featuring cover stars Elton John, Nemo, Mawaan Rizwan The Blessed Madonna and Lulu, is out now.