"Slippin' Into Darkness" (War)

"Slippin' into Darkness" from 1971's All Day Music was War's first hit after the departure of original frontman Eric Burdon, the ex-Animals singer who helped found the multi-ethnic, genre-blurring band in L.A. in 1969.
Lyrically, "Slippin' into Darkness" seems purposely obscure.  There are foggy allusions to alcoholism/drug abuse and even the siren of stardom.  But the general gist is: "don't let yourself slip over the edge"—the "edge" being obsession, addiction, fanaticism, or really any extreme state of mind that can ruin your life and relationships.
What isn't vague is the rhythm section, which is the anchor of the song.  The moment founding band member Harold Ray Brown's drums kick into action after the churchy intro, it's a vivid, syncopated ride to the finish.  
Thing is, if you attempt to count out the rhythm, it's easy to get lost pretty quickly because of the syncopation, even though it's essentially in common time.  The twist is that Brown puts the emphasis on the "and" of 4, which gives the track an almost New Orleans-y, second line kind of feel.  In fact, you kind of have to "feel" your way around the rhythm, letting your gut be your guide rather than your cerebrum.

"Fly Like an Eagle" (Steve Miller Band)

Back in my college days at UNC, I always found it interesting when I'd go to parties and, in the midst of a marathon of Timbaland, Montell Jordan, or Puff Daddy songs, someone would put on Steve Miller Band, and everyone would go nuts.  (Ironically, I remember having to wash Miller Lite out of my shirt after a friend/co-worker pretty much tossed her Solo cup of beer into the air when the "Space Intro" to "Fly Like an Eagle" came floating through the speakers at one particular party.)
What I'm trying to say is, Steve Miller has a surprising amount of staying power compared to many of his pop-rock contemporaries.  You put on the album Fly Like an Eagle (1976) today, and it still sounds remarkably fresh and creative.  Sonically, the album is hard to pin to a certain date because it doesn't exactly scream "1976."  
I think Miller's music holds up well because his roots and influences go deeper than just Elvis, Carl Perkins, or Bill Haley.  In fact, his musical foundation is built upon early 20th century blues, jazz, country, and gospel.  Growing up, Miller was introduced to all sorts of roots music as well as number of influential musicians by his parents, who were both avid jazz/blues fans.  In particular, the Millers were close friends with musician/inventor Les Paul as well as renowned blues musician T-Bone Walker, both of whom would frequently visit the Miller household and teach young Steve licks and riffs on their guitars.
When I hear the opening riff to "Fly Like an Eagle" (which Miller borrowed from his own earlier composition "My Dark Hour"), I can hear that knowledge and love of the blues come through, loud and clear.  But the fact that he bridged that bluesy feel with spacey, futuristic synthesizers and a hard funk beat, which sounds more like something you'd hear on a Stevie Wonder record than a rock record, shows that he wasn't a purist, hemmed in by genre.  Furthermore, he seemed to sense where pop/rock was heading in the decades to come.
In the documentary Fly Like an Eagle: 30 Years Rock'n (2006), Miller says that the song first made its debut around 1973 as an onstage jam with improvised lyrics that centered around the state of America's crumbling inner cities in the Vietnam era.  He then spent the next three years trying to capture the live feel of the song on tape, only to be displeased with the results, time after time.
"I recorded that song three different times.  That means we went into the studio, we spent a lot of money, we spent a lot of time, and we brought a lot of people in, and we recorded it and went, 'Hmmm, no'."
He finally found the right groove on the fourth try with session musicians Gary Mallaber on drums and Lonnie Turner on bass.  But he still felt the track needed something.
"So I'd recorded it, had it all together, and on the last day after it was mixed, I came in with a synth that I had...I hooked it up to my Echoplex (pre-amp), and I said, 'I want to put some effects and some things on this'."
Within a few minutes, Miller had laid down the "Space Intro" and the various sweeping synth lines that give "Fly Like an Eagle" its otherworldly texture.
But when it came time to do another mix down with engineer Jim Gaines, Miller still felt the track was missing its crowning touch.
"So when Gaines and I are mixing it, we had to get another piece of tape.  While we were playing that, we found that the bulk erase tape had a sound on it, and that's the little beep-beep-beep.  And we went, 'That's it!  It's done!'"

"Miss You" (The Rolling Stones)

I remember the first time I saw the music video for The Rolling Stones "Miss You" from the 1978 album Some Girls (the last album where they actually tried to make good music, in my humble opinion).  
I believe Casey Kasem was discussing some factoid about the Stones on his syndicated America's Top 10 T.V. show, and "Miss You" was the clip they chose to show before going to commercial.  I was probably about 3 or 4 years old at the time, and the clip was only about 30 seconds long.  But it made quite an impression on me.  There was something about that groove and Jagger singing his ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh vocals to the camera that clicked with my little brain.  
But it wasn't just, "Oh, that's a great song"; it was more like, "Well, I could do that."  
I spent the rest of the afternoon, strutting around the house and ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ing until my parents asked me to stop.
Anyway, I'd always known that "Miss You" was a by-product of Jagger spending many semi-lucid hours at New York's Studio 54, absorbing the sound and attitude of disco.  But I only recently learned that, although Keith Richards is credited with co-writing the song, he really had nothing to do with it.
In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone magazine's Jann Wenner, Jagger notes that he and multi-instrumentalist Billy Preston came up with the song during rehearsals in Toronto while Richards was awaiting trial on drug charges.
Says Jagger, "Yeah, Billy had shown me the four-on-the-floor bass-drum part, and I would just play the guitar.  I remember playing that in the El Mocambo club when Keith was on trial in Toronto for whatever he was doing.  We were supposed to be there making this live record."
Preston also came up with the song's strutting bassline, which Bill Wyman then reshaped in his own Stonesian image.
And while the bass really is what grabs me, Sugar Blue's harmonica is what puts the track right over the top.  It's a gorgeous, soulful chunk of bluesy grit that keeps the whole affair from getting too glossy and slick.  Kind of a little reminder that, while Studio 54 might have been the height of toot and glam, the real New York of 1978 was a funky, brutalist shit show.

"Le Freak" (Chic)

The members of the band Chic had been invited by artist Grace Jones to join her at the infamous Studio 54 to ring in the New Year, 1978.  So bassist Bernard Edwards and guitarist Nile Rodgers got dressed up in thousand-dollar suits and trudged through the dank Manhattan snow, trying hard not to ruin their finery, only to be told by a bouncer that they weren't getting into the club.  Jones had forgotten to leave their names at the door.

Understandably angry, they headed to Rodgers's apartment nearby and started jamming to vent their frustration.  Within no time, Rodgers came up with a funky guitar riff and Edwards fell in on bass, with the both of them chanting, Awww, f**k off!  F Studio 54 / Awww, f**k off!  F Studio 54.

In an April 2005 interview with Sound on Sound, Rodgers elaborated.

"We were so pissed off at what had happened.  I mean, it was Studio 54, it was New Year's Eve, it was Grace Jones, and we were wearing the most expensive outfits that we had...So 'F**k Off' was a protest song, and we actually thought it was pretty good."

As the song evolved, they kind of came to their senses, realizing that no radio station would ever play a single that featured the F-bomb, over and over.  So "F**k Off" quickly became the less profane "Freak Off," which ultimately became "Freak Out (Le Freak)."

Thing about "Le Freak" (1978), even if you're not a fan of disco (and I'm generally not), it's easy to love this track.  Even for all of its gloss, what with the lush strings and breathy female vocals, it feels rooted in rock and funk.  No other disco group had the gritty-sounding edge of Rodgers's fevered guitar licks and Edwards's larger-than-life bass.  I'd even go so far as to say that the instrumental break in the middle of the song is one of the best grooves of the 70s.  (My thumbs hurt just listening to that bassline!)

"Raspberry Beret" (Prince & The Revolution)

It is so frustrating to write about Prince.  His complete aversion to putting his back catalog and performances online is confounding in this day and age.  I totally get wanting to control your output in a way that doesn't pimp your principles or your art.  But come on.  If people can't find your stuff, they're eventually going to stop looking for your stuff.
I'd bet that there's a growing percentage of people under the age of 20 who've never even heard the track "Raspberry Beret" from Around the World in a Day (1985).  Which is shame, because it's one of the few, true pop masterpieces of the 80s with an arresting melody, tasteful production, and intelligent lyrics to match.
Even though the subject matter is still somewhat "adult" (the song is ostensibly about the Purple One's first time), it has a certain innocence and strong sense of storytelling that made it a bit more accessible to me as a kid.  (Let's just say mom and dad weren't letting me listen too closely to the words of "Little Red Corvette.")  And the narrative is so full of vivid imagery—raindrops on a tin roof, crackling lightning, and the titular hat; it simply was a great song for sparking my 7-year-old pictorial imagination.
My favorite part has always been the way Prince sings the lyric I said now, overcast days never turned me on...  I think it's because the delivery of the line is so bluesy and soulful.  It counterbalances the baroque pop/Sgt. Pepper's feel of the backing track and pulls it back from the brink of being too sunny.

"Mothership Connection (Star Child)" (Parliament)

The entire Mothership Connection album (1975) is a weird, wonderful masterpiece.  It's the album that definitively established Parliament as its own entity with a sound, look, and mythology separate from not only Funkadelic but the whole funk universe.
In fact, George Clinton invented his own universe, filled with sci-fi crusaders guided by Star Child, their messianic leader who railed against all flavors of oppression and repression.  Sensing the turmoil and general unfunkiness on earth, Star Child returned to our planet on the Mothership—his chosen mode of intergalactic funksportation—to shake the shackles of humanity's constipated thinking and get everybody dancing under the Almighty One...
Yes, this was the product of Clinton's chemically-fueled imagination.  But to chalk up the whole Parliament experience to drugs would be to diminish his talent and genius.  Narcotics or no, Clinton invented this elaborate backstory, which was equal parts Narnia and Star Trek, so that he could take his music and its young fans further than either were told they could go.  Galaxies beyond.
In a June 2014 piece for NPR, journalist Allison Keyes discusses with Clinton the Smithsonian's recent acquisition of the massive, metallic Mothership stage prop from Parliament's legendary stage shows.  Clinton comments on the significance of the Mothership and the entire Mothership Connection lore.
"I definitely felt we needed something to be proud of as black people.  We wanted to have a funk opera."

And the track "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" is where that opera really starts to gel.  Any initial "what the?" reactions you might have listening to Clinton's extra-terrestrial DJ ramblings on the disc's opening track start to melt away, and you begin to acclimate to the record's alien funk atmosphere.  Bernie Worrell's jazzy keyboard flourishes over Bootsy Collins's gulping bass provide the perfect backdrop for Clinton to rap about partying in space and reclaiming the pyramids.  It still sounds light years ahead of its time.

My absolute favorite part of the track is the coda.  Clinton makes an announcement like some kind of prophetic flight attendant (When Gabriel's horn blow / You'd better be ready to go); Worrell hits this jazzy chord that sounds like a beam of light coming out of the clouds; and suddenly you're in the middle of this gospel-tinged singalong: Swing down, sweet chariot / Stop and let me ride.

It gets me every time.

"Jingling Baby" (LL Cool J)

So there are two versions of "Jingling Baby": the original from LL Cool J's uneven 1989 album Walking with a Panther and the Marlon Williams (a.k.a. Marley Marl) remix that appeared on 1990's Mama Said Knock You Out.  What's the difference exactly?  For starters, the original feels more like an unfinished demo than a full-fledged song; it's basically just LL rapping over the breakbeat from "Hihache" by the Lafayette Afro Rock Band.  (You might not recognize that sample by name, but you will when you hear it.)  It's also a little less "radio friendly" than the remix because there are a few f-bombs in his flow.
But the remix version is a classic in my book.  Like many of Marley Marl's other productions from the late 80s/early 90s, there's an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to assembling this groove.  For instance, the shiny synth line that serves as the song's bridge comes from the 1981 post-disco track "Walking into Sunshine" by the London-based band Central Line.  (Kind of a left field choice for a song that's a essentially a diss.)  But the real mind blower to me is that the bass and rhythm lines come from flower-power rock band The Grass Roots, specifically the band's 1967 song "You and Love are the Same."  (Fans of The Office: that's Creed Bratton laying down the bassline on this song.)