On “Dance to the Music,” Bay Area soul legends Sly and the Family Stone have just one simple request.

The title track off their 1968 sophomore album, this song was the Family Stone’s big breakthrough—it rose to #8.

Drummer Greg Errico remembers that they were deliberately aiming for a big hit with this song so that they could do other things later. He told Rolling Stone: “We had pressure from CBS to write a hit, so Sly said, ‘Well, OK, we’ve got to capture the audience and get them to listen. Then we can get more sophisticated and more political.’”

This song was also a showcase for the different elements going on in the band. Errico: “Sly wrote a song about dancing to the music, but he also injected some of the attributes that the band had—the vocal thing, the black/white/male/female thing. A little vocal breakdown, a drum breakdown, Larry Graham’s bass and Freddie Stone’s guitar, plus the horns—and to show we’re dancing and having fun together.”