"Joanna" is a song by the R&B/funk

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...

 group Kool & the Gang

Kool & the Gang

Kool & the Gang are an American jazz, R&B, soul, and funk group, originally formed as the Jazziacs in Jersey City, New Jersey in 1964.They went through several musical phases during the course of their recording career, starting out with a purist jazz sound, then becoming practitioners of R&B and...

. Released in 1984 from the album, In the Heart

In the Heart

In the Heart is the seventeenth studio album by the funk band Kool & the Gang, released in 1983. The album became a hit and brought a return to the Billboard charts for the band. The hit love song, "Joanna", soared to number two on the charts in the U.S. and UK, and hit number one on the U.S. R&B...

, the song was an immediate hit, peaking at number two on the singles charts in both the US and the UK. It topped the R&B

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs

Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, is a chart released weekly by Billboard in the United States.The chart, initiated in 1942, is used to track the success of popular music songs in urban, or primarily African American, venues. Dominated over the years at various times by jazz, rhythm and blues, doo-wop, soul,...

 chart in the US.

"Joanna" is a romantic R&B ballad, like many of the group's later work, with the eponymous girl the main subject of the song. In the video

Music video

A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...

, "Joanna" is portrayed as a cook serving the band members at a diner.