2026 marks 50 years since pioneering glam rock trio Labelle released their sixth studio album Chameleon, bringing to a close one of the most radical reinventions in music history. Six years earlier, the group affectionately known as the “Sweethearts of the Apollo” shed the demure and polished persona that characterised their initial incarnation as Patti Labelle & The Bluebelles. 

Though the Bluebelles enjoyed considerable success with hits like ‘I Sold My Heart to the Junkman’ and ‘Down the Aisle (The Wedding Song), they were barely distinguishable from the 60s girl group prototype—bound to the conventions of coordinated outfits, synchronized choreography and sappy love songs. With the assistance of supernova manager and creative director Vicki Wickham, Patti Labelle, Sarah Dash and Nona Hendryx re-emerged as Labelle. 

Across the group’s previous five albums, the ladies had established themselves as a cult sensation. Raucously combining rock, funk and soul with substantive songs musing on sexual liberation, politics and time travel. On Chameleon all those elements coalesce with sharper focus. In Patti’s own words, there was no central concept or overthinking that went into the album’s formulation. “It wasn’t a story [laughs], the album was just 8 great songs we wanted to record.” Nevertheless, the album’s title declaratively stamped what the ethos of Labelle had always been; an artist-focused enterprise preoccupied with expansion. As Nona explains, “We were this constantly evolving and changing entity and that’s the idea of a chameleon.”  

By this point in the group’s lifespan, Nona Hendryx had long settled into her role as the group’s primary creative architect, writing six of the album’s eight tracks. Co-piloting the production of the record was David Rubinson, known for his work with Herbie Hancock, The Pointer Sisters and Santana. It became their first album since 1973’s ‘Pressure Cookin’ to feature no contributions from Allen Toussaint who had helmed their previous albums Nightbirds and Phoenix. The former being notable for generating the group’s chart-topping signature hit ‘Lady Marmalade.’ 

Reflecting on the decision to break-away from Toussaint, Nona notes, “Allen was a brilliant musician who really brought the earthiness and funk part of Labelle forward. We had that in us to begin with, but working Allen and The Meters in New Orleans, really solidified that foundation. But there were some colours that we felt were missing. So, the thought behind working with David [Rubinson] was to help us move the sound forward.” 

The end result was a record that was ultimately more well-rounded than any other in their discography. ‘Chameleon’ showcased the group’s ability to move effortlessly between accessibility and experimentation. Chameleon moved effortlessly between the razor-tongued funk of ‘Get You Somebody New’, the elegant Philly soul of ‘Come Into My Life’—home to some of Patti’s most underrated roof-raising and the salsa-infused ‘Gypsy Moths.’

The group’s transition from The Bluebelles to Labelle, marked not just a transformation in their look and sound, it also signalled a reconfiguration of how vocal duties were shared. For Joi, an artist who inherited Labelle’s renegade spirit in the ’90s with her forward-thinking albums The Pendulum Vibe and Amoeba Cleansing Syndrome, Chameleon was perhaps the clearest evidence of how the group had evolved into a collective force. As she notes, “there was more of a oneness on ‘Chameleon’. Obviously as always Ms Patti, is going to lead the charge and set the tone but it felt more even and cohesive.” 

Nowhere was this cohesion more evident than on ‘A Man In A Trenchcoat’, the album’s most avant-garde turn where Nona assumes the lead vocal. Built around a psychedelic groove punctuated with bluesy, boogie-woogie chord progressions, the track evokes a hallucinatory haze through its allusions to voodoo and the supernatural. Inspired by an eerie encounter with performance artist Stephen Varble, Nona approaches the track with a mysterious and cool luster, while Sarah anchors the chorus lines and Patti fills the open space with ferocious bursts of riffing. 

Few moments on the album better encapsulated Labelle’s appetite for provocation than ‘Going Down Makes Me Shiver’, a daring meditation on oral sex that masterfully merged religious and sexual imagery. Elaborating on the track’s juxtaposition, Nona remembers, “It’s not as taboo as it was when I wrote it, but it has the religious connotation of being baptized or being transformed. It’s about arriving at a new feeling of ecstasy. It is a combining of the two, because in a strange way they are parallel emotional reactions.”

Sarah Dash’s piercing soprano embellishments and the song’s gospel-inflected modulations extend this tension between the sensual and the spiritual. Reflecting on how her relationship with the song has shifted over the past 50 years, Patti jokes, “It’s a song I would love to sing now, but my son will not allow me to sing this anymore [laughs].” 

Upon the album’s eventual release on June 17, 1976, it would peak at No. 94 on the Billboard 200 and No. 21 on its concurrent R&B chart, becoming the lowest-charting album of their career. With the widespread success of their 1974 breakthrough single ‘Lady Marmalade’ and its parent album Nightbirds still fresh in the rearview mirror, expectations for hits and strong sales were inevitably heightened. Particularly after the comparatively muted performance of its follow-up Phoenix. Yet for Nona, commercial pressures weren’t a concern. “‘Lady Marmalade’ was a fluke. We recorded it, and it became what it became, but we group didn’t really gauge our success on how many records were sold, because we’d been such a live-centred group.” 

Though Patti believed the album was worthy of greater recognition, she was also acutely aware of the barriers the group constantly faced. “We were still black women fighting to be noticed. Nobody was doing music like we were doing, so we were not accepted that greatly. It’s hard out there for a pimp and a black woman.” Even then, she concedes that many of the tracks on the album weren’t necessarily obvious choices for radio. “I loved all of the songs, but did I see any showstoppers or any of these songs being a hit? I didn’t really see it.” 

Despite this, Chameleon would end up yielding one moderate hit with ‘Isn’t It A Shame’ which peaked at No.18 on the R&B chart (then known as the Hot Soul Singles chart). ‘Isn’t It A Shame’ stood as the album’s emotional centerpiece. On the surface, it is an affecting song on the impending dissolution of a romantic relationship, but in hindsight it became a poignant reflection of the tensions unfolding within Labelle themselves. 

Although the group’s eventual split has often been attributed to creative differences, Nona offers a more nuanced explanation: “We were still very much a unified unit. The music part of it was very small,” she clarifies. Rather it was the constraints of their individual lives that were becoming increasingly difficult to navigate: “Patti was married with a child, and taking on the adoption of some of her neighbours’ kids. Sarah was ending her marriage and I was coming out as a bisexual woman. So, there were personal things that were going on.” 

Adding to the poignancy, Patti recalls that ‘Isn’t It A Shame’ was the final song they recorded for the album which inadvertently imbued the track with an unavoidable sense of bittersweetness. Elaborating further on the statements in her 1996 memoir Don’t Block the Blessings: Revelations of a Lifetime about Sarah and Nona initially not wanting to record the song, Patti adds, “This was our last song as Labelle. We knew that it was the last song that we were going to do as a group, so maybe they were feeling that way because of that reason.” 

Despite loose plans being in motion for another album titled Shaman and an accompanying theatrical production called Nile Women, both of which were envisioned as explorations of Labelle’s connection to their African heritage, Labelle disbanded after 15 years together. In retrospect, the album’s artwork showing the three members with their backs to the front foreshadowed what was to come. Almost prophetically, the photo foretold that the three women were moving towards separate paths, even if their destinations were yet to be determined. Commenting on this apparent premonition, Nona remarked, “It was the beginning of the end of Labelle. Image-wise it said that this was an ending and that there’s a beginning for each one of us on the other side.” 

Chameleon would stand as Labelle’s final album for 32 years until they reunited for 2008’s ‘Back To Now’, featuring contributions from Gamble & Huff, Lenny Kravitz and Wyclef Jean. Yet even prior to that, the sisterly bond between Patti, Nona and Sarah never kept them away from each other for too long. “We split up, but we never said it’s over, because it wasn’t over. We still did things together,” Patti reminds. And that they did, reuniting several times in the interim years, most notably on the 1995 house classic ‘Turn It Out’ which was featured on the soundtrack for the Wesley Snipes-led ‘To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.’ Nona would also co-write Patti’s 1991 Top 10 R&B single ‘When You’ve Been Blessed (Feels Like Heaven).’ Patti’s reverence for Nona’s songwriting has never wavered, vowing, “Nona is the best writer in the world, as far as I’m concerned. To me, she was the one who wrote the songs that Patti Labelle sang best. She is the writer of my life.” 

Sarah Dash passed away in 2021, but the spirit of Labelle continues through Patti and Nona, who remain active custodians of the group’s legacy. With the help of Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Lynn Nottage, the pair are in the midst of developing a rock opera based on their music. 

Decades after its release, Chameleon quietly found new life through a younger generation of artists. ‘Isn’t It A Shame’ continually grew in stature as one of Labelle’s most enduring singles, but would reach widespread recognition when Nelly sampled the track on his 2004 international smash hit ‘My Place’ featuring Jahiem. Years later, Monica would do the same on the hidden gem ‘Catch Me’ in 2012. But the most overt declaration of admiration for Chameleon would occur when Erykah Badu immortalised the album’s artwork in her music video for ‘Honey’ in 2008. 

While these isolated moments were among the most explicit examples of Labelle’s impact, their fingerprints had long been woven throughout the center of popular culture. As experimental shape-shifter Dawn Richard stresses “So many artists borrowed from what they were already doing, the hairstyles, the space-inspired costumes, the footwear, the entire aesthetic. They were truly ahead of their time when it came to fashion and visual storytelling.” Indeed, their extravagant feather-adorned space costumes designed by Larry LeGaspi helped establish a visual vocabulary later embraced by a plethora of major stars including Elton John, Parliament-Funkadelic, KISS, Grace Jones and Earth, Wind & Fire. 

Less obviously whether their successors know it or not, they also played a pivotal part in creating greater space for Black women who took up space in realms where they were seldom welcome. Decades before artists like Janelle Monáe, Brittany Howard, WILLOW, Res and Fefe Dobson waged intersecting battles around genre and race, Labelle were already rewriting the possibilities for Black women in rock. Reflecting on their often-overlooked significance, Nona epitomizes the group as “a silent canary in the coal mine. We were a signal of what could come and what could happen.” 

Labelle represented a new and disruptive form of self-governance that hadn’t been seen with three Black women. They were a Black feminist hurricane – rule breakers in every sense of the word. For Joi, they epitomized an unshakeable fearlessness that bordered on the divine. “It was too much God for people to handle. It was too much God in their face. People hadn’t seen or experienced that much. That much purity, that much power, that much I don’t give a f*** energy.” 

Chameleon was the swan song of a remarkable and singular unit that revolutionized how a Black female singing group could look, sound and operate. While it might not be viewed as their definitive album, it is the record that best captures the essence of who they were: bold, unconventional and fluid. Pondering on what she hopes a new generation of listeners will take from the album 50 years on, Patti says “I hope they hear what we meant for them to hear: greatness. Things that weren’t done before. I hope they get to really feel that we as Labelle were phenomenal. Bad mama jamas who were hot, and still are.”