A selection byThe Waxonia Desk
Chicago House
Six records from the Chicago rooms themselves rather than from the documentary about them. Two of them are not house at all, which is the point: what a room plays and what a genre is later said to be are different lists.
- Picks
- 6
- Genre
- Chicago House
- Years
- 1980–1987
- Curator
- The Waxonia Desk
- Updated
- 2026-08-29
Listen to the whole list
Play it through here →One record after another, with the verdicts
Take 5 of 6 to YouTube → (opens in a new tab)
Opens the list on YouTube as a playlist you can save to your own account. We never see your account, and nothing is stored here. 1 of these records have no verified YouTube link yet, so they are left out rather than guessed at.
The picks — selected, not ranked
Mr. Fingers / Can You Feel It
1986 · Trax
The record most often used to explain house to people who were not there. What it did in a room and what it does in a documentary are two different things, and the room came first.
Also on Chicago House, The Eighties, The Waxonia Desk — A Way In, The Waxonia Desk — Looped and Filtered, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Frankie Knuckles & Jamie Principle / Your Love
1987 · Trax
It circulated on tape for years before anybody pressed it. A city's music is a strange object when its most famous song exists first as a cassette somebody made you a copy of.
Also on Chicago House, Sung to Someone, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Marshall Jefferson / Move Your Body
1986 · Trax
Subtitled the house music anthem, and it earned the definite article. The piano is the argument: it opened the music to people who needed a tune to hold, and began the long business of making house respectable.
Also on Chicago House, The Waxonia Desk — Looped and Filtered, The Waxonia Desk — The Hundred
Fingers Inc. / Bring Down the Walls
1986 · Alleviated
Robert Owens singing gospel phrasing over a drum machine, in rooms most churches would not have admitted the congregation to. That tension is the whole record and nobody has resolved it since.
Also on Chicago House
Strafe / Set It Off
1984 · Jus Born
A New York electro record that Chicago played as house. The line people draw between the two genres was not visible from inside the booth, and this is the record that proves it.
Also on Electro
Loose Joints / Is It All Over My Face
1980 · West End
Larry Levan's mix, and the disco record that sounds most like what came after it. Chicago inherited more from New York than the city's own mythology tends to admit.
About the curator
The people who write the rankings on this site. We keep the lists honest, we argue about the order, and we get asked the same question more than any other: where should someone actually start. These are our answers.