In October 2000,
VH1 ranked "Ring My Bell" No. 53 in their list of "100 Greatest Dance Songs". In 2010,
Billboard magazine included it in their list of "The 50 Sexiest Songs of All Time". In 2020,
Slant Magazine ranked "Ring My Bell" No. 80 in their "The 100 Best Dance Songs of All Time" list. The significance of the song to the history of
disco is discussed in Episode 3 of the 2024
PBS series
Disco: Soundtrack of a Revolution. Same year,
Forbes ranked it No. 12 in their list of "The 30 Greatest Disco Songs of All Time". In March 2025,
Billboard ranked it No. 33 in their list of "The 100 Best Dance Songs of All Time", writing, "Anita Ward was working as a substitute teacher in
Memphis when she recorded "Ring My Bell", a disco song that became her only major hit. The track was written by
Frederick Knight, who had minor success in the early 1970s with the famed soul outfit
Stax Records. Knight initially penned "Ring My Bell" for the young singer
Stacy Lattisaw, envisioning a song about teenagers chatting on the phone. This origin story is often disputed, as the opening lyric was often interpreted as a double entendre:
You can ring my bell, anytime, anywhere. The instrumentation is pleasingly plush, with a "whoop"-ing sound accenting the first beat, guitars pawing around the edges of the drums, and a chiming motif that pairs perfectly with Ward's flirty hook." ==Charts==