"Never Never Gonna Give You Up" (Barry White)

Barry White had always been something of a joke to me: a disco relic whose deep-voiced, love-man persona was too much of a caricature to be anything but a punchline.  
But I changed my opinion (a bit) when I first heard "Never Never Gonna Give You Up" in all 8 minutes of its glory on the 70s soul-filled soundtrack to the crime drama Dead Presidents (1995).  From the moment the lengthy, atmospheric "A Day in the Life"-esque intro kicked in with its climactic strings and funky hi-hat, it proved to me that White wasn't the lounge act I'd always pegged him for.
First included on White's second album Stone Gon' (1973), "Never Never Gonna Give You Up" is more rooted in funk than it is disco (which, technically, didn't even exist as a genre until 1975).  Yes, the track is decorated with White's borderline-sappy strings and mumbled bedroom come-ons, but it's driven by the relentless punch of session drummer Ed Greene's rhythms and punctuated by the syncopated, melodic thump of Wilton Felder's bass—both of which keep White's cotton candy romanticism from getting too sweet.  Also, White really does turn in one helluva vocal that's the right blend of smokiness and grit.  (Hearing him repeatedly mispronounce the word shtick on the choruses is kind of worth the price of admission alone.)