Give It To You

"Give It To You" by Martha Wash

Step onto a dance floor in early 1993 and you would have heard it instantly: a voice of enormous power soaring over a thumping house beat, the kind of voice that could fill a club without any help from technology. For years that voice had powered hit after hit while the woman behind it stood in the shadows. By 1993, Martha Wash was finally stepping into the spotlight under her own name, and this single was part of that long-overdue reckoning.

The Voice Behind the Hits

Martha Wash had one of the most formidable instruments in dance music, a gospel-trained powerhouse that had anchored countless club anthems. She first rose to prominence as half of the duo behind a string of disco and dance hits, and through the late 1980s and early 1990s her vocals drove smash records on which she often went uncredited, her face hidden while others lip-synced her parts. That situation became a genuine industry controversy, raising hard questions about credit and recognition in dance music. By the time this single arrived, Wash was reclaiming her name and her work, releasing material as the star she had always been.

A House Anthem Built on Power

The track is pure early-1990s dance-pop, riding an insistent four-on-the-floor pulse with Wash's voice front and center where it belonged. There is no hiding here. The production gives her room to belt, to soar, to remind everyone exactly whose pipes had been powering the dance charts all along. It is a celebratory, body-moving record, the sound of a singer claiming her moment on a floor she had helped fill for years. The energy is generous and unforced, built for clubs and for joy. You can hear in it the confidence of a vocalist who had spent years carrying records for other people and now had every right to stand at the front. There is a kind of vindication built into the performance, the sound of a singer finally getting to put her name on the kind of music she had always made so well. That sense of ownership gives the track an extra charge that a less storied voice could never supply.

A Brief Pop Chart Appearance

On the Billboard Hot 100, the single kept a modest profile. It debuted at number 90 on March 13, 1993, which proved to be its peak position, before slipping to number 96 the following week. Its time on the Hot 100 amounted to just two weeks. Those numbers, though, tell only part of the story. Wash's real territory was the dance and club charts, where her records consistently outperformed their pop showings, and where her voice carried a weight no ranking could capture. The pop chart was simply never the truest measure of an artist whose home was the dance floor, and the brevity of this single's Hot 100 stay says far more about that divide than about the quality of the record itself.

A Belated Recognition

The song belongs to an important chapter in Wash's career, the period when she finally received billing and recognition for the voice that had quietly defined a whole stretch of dance music. Her insistence on proper credit helped reshape industry practices and stands as a meaningful footnote in the history of pop. For fans of big-voiced house music, this track is a reminder of just how much sheer vocal force she brought to every record she touched.

Turn It Up and Move

This is music built for motion, for lights and bass and a crowded floor. Press play and let that towering voice lift you, and you will understand why so many hits leaned on Martha Wash to carry them. Some singers were simply meant to be heard at full volume, and she is unmistakably one of them.

"Give It To You" — Martha Wash's singular moment on the 1990s charts.