I was a child during those yearsand the biggest songs of the day defined my childhood, mixed with what else was going on. I don't remember much about the hatred disco had until later on. At least I don't remember it vividly enough to account for those days. When it went away dance music still prevailed in 1980 and the Bee Gees didn't hide away for too long and came back in 1981. Donna Summer still had hits into the 80s and the Rolling Stones repeated their flare for disco in 1980 with "Emotional Rescue". By 1981 my own tastes had changed and my love for The Beatles, Stringsteen, Petty and Mellencamp grew to dominate all that I loved. But I look back and remember disco fondly and remember how much fun it was even though I was too young to participate in much of the culture. One mistake though; You mentioned "More Than A Woman" dominating the charts. It was never released as a single for the Bee Gees. "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" were the only two disco songs released by the Bee Gees on Saturday Night Fever. Their other hit was the ballad, "How Deep Is Your Love".
Just like rock and roll, unfortunately music genres didn’t reach their popular maximums (not quality) until a white person became famous for it. Elvis was essential to rocks growth because record labels wouldn’t market chuck berry to the white market. While The Bee Gees weren’t the first, or the most important, they did have big commercial success that a lot of people later on saw as what disco was. Today when people think of disco they think of The Bee Gees and abba if they aren’t super into it, and I’d hardly call most of abbas music disco at all
Thank you for this! I knew most of the history, but didn't realize that Disco Demolition night took place in Chicago. I'm also thankful for the eyewitness account you shared here.
Disco never died, it evolved into HiNRG, new wave, club, disco funk, to the house music pumping the clubs today. Despite the efforts of racists and homophobes, dance culture still won!
I love disco music and most music but I did not like some of the Disco culture. The culture I knew about at least. I was 13 in 1980 and it seemed like it glorified drug abuse and materialism, the fancy clothes and arrogant attitudes. Granted I only saw the version media and Saturday Night Fever presented. It wasn't till I was older that I learned that it also embraced diversity, though I think that diversity continued into the '80s and beyond with dance and house music. At the time it also seemed that everybody was screwed up on drugs in that era. I don't know for sure if disco was culture that perpetuated that as I know in the '80s A friend of mine went to a Hank Williams Jr concert and saw rampant drug abuse there. And Stevie Ray Vaughan finally shook the habit in the late '80s shortly before his unfortunate death in a helicopter accident.
The rise and fall of disco is viewed though a very American POV. For the rest of western culture, dance music continued to be huge. The United States mainstream has always been more wary of dance music in general for a multitude of reasons. Dance music in the US has almost always flourished within minority communities or major urban centers (NYC, Chicago, etc....)
I am a musician too. With Disco, Latinized music led to the Salsoul wave; Black music turned into disco-funk/R and B, and the queer movement led to the "glam and drag" of disco itself--especially the fashions and all of the spectacular lighting.
Actually Disco songs were still on the charts in 1980. Lipps Inc., The SOS Band, and even Diana Ross had hits that year. Even rock bands like Queen,and Pink Floyd had big hits that had Disco elements in their songs in 1980.
I don't think Disco ever "fell"; fout-on-the-floor just got different names, like "House", "Dance" and "Electro". All the popular acts still make Disco, Kylie Minogue being the most recent and most obvious example of that.
I was born in 1968 and was just a kid during this time. But I always loved Disco music and still have many favorite songs from that era that I still listen to!
I was burn in 1973, and remembered hearing Disco music and seeing it everywhere. I would speak and play it on my parents radio, when they would leave my sister and I with the babysitter. 1978 -1979. Abba, the Brothers Johnson, Donna Summer, A Taste of Honey ,S.O.S and more. Lou Garrett, I was made for dancing. As a child in a Christian household, I couldn't wait for the neighbors to play the songs on their stereo, or Soul train to come on when spent the night over at my babysitter house. 1977-1979 was a big impact on me looking back, having lost a lot in life and my parents. This brief History of Disco, was every important to fully understand. I always seen whites, blacks and others coming together in a loving place with the music. However, I never knew it was based on the LGBTQ foundation. Disco was truly hated on, however thank God TH-cam and channels like this one. Time stamped: 8/2/22 -5:13 am.
Be nice if you could do an hour on this era. There's so much those of us who were young adults during disco never knew. Out on the prairies my only contact was a Columbia Record Club mailing of Donna Summer's Bad Girls which I played really loud while I vacuumed the house.
I would say very roughly correlates as in the 50s jazz and blues were big as well as rock and roll, in the 60s it was Motown and the British Invasion then psychedelia then heavy rock which in the 70s led to heavy metal as well as soul, reggae and punk followed by new wave as we went into the 80s. Regardless as always I enjoyed your video thanks oh and you forgot the disco version of the Star Wars theme which really was the dregs 😊
Good video. I must say though that the Bee Gees didn’t take a break from music. After 1979, they were busy writing Barbra Streisand’s album “Guilty” released in 1980. They released their next album in 1981 but it only was successful in Europe because of the disco backlash in the US, unfortunately. They continued to write albums for other artists like Kenny Rodgers and Dionne Warwick through the 80s as well, giving them major hits. The American radio didn’t want the Bee Gees, but they wanted their songwriting, evidenced by their numerous number 1s they wrote for these other artists.
I was a club DJ, mostly in the 80's. Disco was supposedly dead and buried by then. And we're supposed to forget that there was a lot of great disco (OK, "post-disco" or dance") music in that era. Packed clubs were commonplace. Flanigan's Mardi Gras in NE Philly (1984-1985) was legendary, with confetti cannons, impromptu "showstoppers" and girls dancing inside glass eggs. And then came Pulsations nightclub in Glen Mills, PA, a total sensory overload that came complete with a visit by a robot that descended from a spaceship at midnight. In 1999, I found myself playing to an audience of almost 1,000 people on Saturday nights at The Big Kahuna in Delaware. Today EDM, along with mainstream artists like Lizzo and Dua Lipa have kept the genre alive and well and eventually might spark a full-blown resurgence. So this whole idea that one record burning by Steve Dahl somehow killed disco is such a bad joke.
I never heard of disco demo night before this. So I learned something today. I was a teenager back in the 70s. I liked disco music. But I remember that not everybody did. Anyway, I have been listening to a lot of the old disco lately and I really do appreciate the sounds. Good disco is great stuff. Feeling good is the bottom line.
Nice. Subscribed. My dad was a big disco freak in the 70s. Had an afro and wore track suits. He gave my mom a mini disco ball on their 1 year anniversary.
Think I spotted the disco duck in one of your pics 😊 I remember it here in the UK as being popular for a short time when Saturday Night Fever came out but it faded rapidly as punk and rock were big at the time. Britain had a different youth culture with different groups of teens competing and fighting against each other. We had groups such as teddy boys, rockers, mods, punks, northern souls fans, skinheads (into 2 tone and ska not originally like the racists skinheads that emerged in the US) and other smaller groups each loyal to their music and against the rest. When I was 16 I was a long haired rocker into heavy rock but I also loved Motown but to hear it I had to sneak round to a friend’s house who was a Mod (we had a 60s mod revival in the late 70s early 80s due to bands like the jam and the film Quadrophenia by the who) and listen to his records as my rocker mates would have taken the piss if they knew I liked it. The tribal youth culture faded out by the end of the 80s with the rise of acid house and the rave scene. I still love all sorts of music now at 57 and will often play a mix of classic rock, Motown, Beatles and blues when I’m driving. Cheers from England
@@matthewmckenzie3394 thank you Matthew. Teen culture in Britain was very different from the USA back then, it still is but to a lesser degree now as the world is much more closely connected.
@@matthewmckenzie3394 if you haven’t seen Quadrophenia or a British film about the youth prison system of the late seventies called Scum I highly recommend both. Scum is v violent for its time but includes some of the cast from Quadrophenia including Phil Daniels and Ray Winstone who in both films give great performances. If you do watch Quadrophenia the scene where Jimmy’s scooter is run over and Jimmy is ranting at the postman Phil Daniels made the lines up on the spot and the actor playing the postman was genuinely shocked by Phil’s language and brilliantly played reaction.
Nu disco is big now.Disco never died,only transformed and we still like David Mancuso,Larry Levan,Walter Gibbons and many other ones.John Morales and Dimitri from Paris are huge today.
Reminds me of the rise and fall of the TRL-era bubblegum pop and R&B around the turn of the millenium - Got popular in 1997/98, absolutely dominated the pop scene in 1999/2000, but then it was on life support by mid-2001. The demise of both genres were supposedly put down to some heavily-publicised world-changing event (i.e. Disco demolition night in 1979 and 9/11 in 2001), even though the real cause of it was market fatigue and over-saturation, and over the next couple of years after it died, there would be one more big release from an A-list pop-star keeping it hanging by a thread (MJ's "Thriller" album and Kylie Minogue's "Fever" album)
While I agree that some of the early "Disco" was 70's great R&B But I'm going to push back a bit here. The consumerism of the genre took over very early. As a 20 something at the time who worked in University Radio, the clubs that used to feature live acts mostly dried up. Disco bars were pick-up bars. To see a live act mostly meant going to a "Concert" not a bar or a club. Punk acts, at least in Toronto, were a reaction to this lack of live venues often in places that never used to feature music of any kind.
Stomp bye The Brothers Johnson goes so hard. I can't see how music like that fell out of style. it's still a vibe to this day especially while cruising around in the Crown Vic.
Disco never really died. Now they are called Retros. I was attending Gay-Mixed discos. Had a blast, for nearly 5 years. Get out there on the floor and it all disappeared. Was also boycottiing xxxx Anita B and Florida Orange Juice. My body isn't able to dance for hours these days. Brings back funky, fun memories.
I remember leaving the 6th grade that summer and disco was all over the radio, by the time I started 7th grade in the fall new wave music took over & the 80's officially started.
70s music was all about rock - the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zep, the Eagles, Pink Floyd etc. Disco was a fun break from some of the heaviness of 70s rock and bad news on the TV (Watergate, Vietnam, and oil crises), as was country rock like Lynyrd Skynryd ( so many Ys...) and the Charlie Daniels Band. Also popular in my house were pop singers like the Captain and Tennille, Debby Boone, the yacht rock gang, and earnest songwriters like Carol King, James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot. It was a fun time and I'm glad it was my childhood..
Rise by Herb Albert is easy listening but its also tied to disco so its not 0 disco records on the top 10 at that time, its actually 1! Herb Albert is a smart guy, he knew people hated disco so concealed under an instrumental song and made seem like an AC record but fused some disco sounds such as the beat and accompaniment!
Whaat?!? No _KC and the Sunshine Band_ ?!? They're responsible for the entire Miami Junkanoo/Electric boogaloo sound that became disco, with over 10 top ten hits--five of which were #1.
Here is the truth..... Rock music got huge... The record companies had to pay out huge sums of money because they didnt own the music. They wanted to end that and push rock music out... So the music companies said that 'prog' rock were dinosaurs... Pink Floyd, Led Zeppling, The Who... were attacked in the press along with Yes, Genesis, Styx... etc.. The companies brought in punk music to show everyone that you didnt have to know a thing about playing an instrument or singing... disco... all the time disco... the companies stopped printing rock records.. cut back on the production and made disco flashy and new and all over every record store, while rock was put in the back with little to no fanfare... at the same time, the companies reduced their royalty rate to new artists... made sure they could never get the control that artists like Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd had... Disco was never threatening, it never told you what the government was doing.. Neither did punk.... until the Clash did... and then they were taken down also... Chicago went from making songs like A song for Richard and his Friends... to... 'If you leave me now'.... non controversial... non threatening... Disco... was dancing... fucking .... and cocaine... repeat...
Everybody knows that funk was the real music of black liberation. Disco was just a watered down version of that. George Clinton hated it, and rightfully so.
Disco has never died, but it has evolved into post-disco/boogie/underground dance, which remained popular until 1984, the year hip hop starred to become more popular..
I was a teen buying disco records, and loved the genre..while overall, it did die down..it slowly morphed in simply dance music, and lost the moniker disco....I read the Bee Gees had those songs ready long before the movie was filmed and they built scenes around them..meaning if they just released them on an album on their own, it would have been a passing fancy, as many popular artists released disco albums like Rod Stewart, The Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand, that went on to have great careers.
Good article on Disco! As I experienced it, it was a joyous music and time that was indeed driven by both Black and LBGTQ groups that eventually, everyone got as it was just so damn fun! But, of course, the damnable puritanical element had to jump in and bash it, just like it did for so many youth music art forms. But it, and the joyous feeling from it, continues to this day, probably best in the EDM and EDC scenes where people are having a great time listening and interacting with the music, may it live forever (and religion just die already, FFS!)
Disco did died but in that same city CHICAGO ,NEW YORK ,AND OVERSEAS BROUGHT BACK DISCO BUT USING DIFFERENT GENRE LIKE CHICAGO CREATED HOUSE MUSIC A SON AND DAUGHTER OF DISCO KEPT THE SAME BPM BUT SPEED UP THE DRUM,MORE BASE TO IT
It was just fantastic, we in England had the Jam The Police, The Clash /Pistols and All ti6a backdrop of Disco fever and Joy Divisionesque sounds, Liverpool was an incredible place in the late 1970s early 80s 📚👉🙏😊
i was born in '69 & my 1st memories of 'black dance music' (we didn't know it was called 'disco,' yet--& i was borne in a very eisenhower era looking whitewashed, boring place) were the go go dancers on Electric Company & morgan freeman spun the discs!! as a 4 yr old, i recognized this music was better & more addictive than any rock or pop on the radio. go go was still around then so the girls wore go go boots & danced in cages but the music was . . . disco!! then the flutes & the violens started chiming in around '75 & it was, like, 'uh oh!! this is getting REAL!!' by the time the bee gees did their thing w/disco it was already 'dead'--although still 'going on,' in a way; anyone who was alive then, i think, knows what i mean . . .
I was there back East in Hartford Conn in 1975 & travel w/ my high school sweetheart turned gay - to the hottest discos from New York to Yale& Boston All gay /straight came it was the best dancing &exciting music But hows DonnaSummer not mentioned. Greatest disco queen of all. She turned disco on. When I came home to LA she was hot. All wanted her. I wasn’t into Bee Gees I’m a classic rock grad but disco was great then because DonnaSummer existed. She was Disco
That’s not true in the 70’s there was a trans community too, and some of those people are still alive and now don’t fall into the simple “gay” “lesbian” “straight” categories, they might be demiromantic or asexual so I think lgbtq+ is the better choice of words, at least for this time period, queer also works too.
We had to pretend to hate disco because that is what rockers did. But eventually we all had the Saturday night Fever album. I know at least in the NYC area where I grew up you couldn't avoid disco. It was blasting everywhere out of cars and parks and boom boxes and stores and events etc. That just was the 70's. I was too young for discos but imagine it was a blast. My mom used to take us disco roller skating I do remember that.
I still love disco. The soundtrack of Looking For Mr. Goodbar is one of the best in cinematic history. I consider it more radical than punk because it represented expression of many of the marginalized. Great video. Thank you.
I give rap music ten or fifteen years from now and then it dies. Most younger rappers are now being killed either they were murdered or had a drug overdose. I am a black woman I used to love rap music. I don't listen to it anymore. By looking back black people should have let go of rap music a long time ago. It ruin the black women image and poisoned black boys' minds. C. Delores Tucker was right all along.
Disco was the 70's version of 60's bubble gum music. The vast majority of the record-buying public, including the minority groups mentioned, didn't like the way disco crowded out other music. Everybody liked some of the songs, but like most music a lot of it wasn't all that good right from the beginning. I think that people still like the really good records, but disco did overstay its welcome because it was limited in how it could develop musically (not everyone can be the Bee Gees). It's a lot easier to appreciate it for the genre it is, now, but it was too limited in variety to last any longer than it did as a dominant style. Today's music is very much tinged with disco influence, especially anything that wants to sound like "dance music". But what modern music makers primarily learned from disco was how to be formulaic, which is what many people hated about music then, and also now.
I don't believe disco ever died I went to New York and went to a place they played some really great records and ended up dancing for ages disco is a feeling I who have nothing by Sylvester is a classic the disco sucks stuff was like the Nazis
@10:34 - It's funny that you didn't highlight Chic "Good Times" and Kiss "I Was Made for Lovin' You", both disco songs or songs heavily influenced by disco music. 🤣🤣🤣
Plus those communities you forgot women, like madonna or blondie DH who were very fond of postdisco. The Best female performance are Black R&B disco funky HiNergy Garage House EDM artists without a doubt. This was the only genre with an european significant production (village people giorgio morodor....) and US was very jealous. Then, the monopole of the arrogant conservative US music industry reigned in the early 80's and had a negative impact in the creation process.
Great video! Its a: fun, fast and actually interesting kind of music when considering the clever buildup and drop down medleys. I've probably been a fan since 1995! I was *_11_* most of '95 and gradually got more interested that much more in my 20s- I'm now in my last days of *_*38_** and it's really made a personal culture mark on me- I like in literally this often order: Disco, Rock and Metal!
Why does this otherwise good history of disco have a thumbnail photo that implies that Debby Harry killed disco? The video doesn't even mention her, and Blondie's "Heart of Glass" was a solid contribution to the disco canon.
Disco may have started black, Latino and gay underground, but it didn't take off until it was straight white and mainstream. And that is what eventually caused it to be renamed dance music.
The Loft was not the first! You forgot to mention Francis Grasso who invented beatmatching where Nicky, Frankie and Larry learned from. Nice broad overview though.
8:43-8:48: "...as record labels began releasing tacky and lifeless music, the word 'disco' was put on anything and everything to make it sell..." Three of the six groups you display here are Dutch. Hm. Thank you from The Netherlands. 😉
Speaking as someone who is a massive fan of both Iron Maiden (adore Bruce Dicknson!) & the Village People (My favorite is the lovely David Hodo as the constructon worker!) I must say Disco NEVER DIED! Disco smply became dance, house & techno (which I also love!) Disco just evolved & morphed into new genres However. if you look (& listen) to music of the 60's through to the late 90's, at least it was GOOD music. The so called music of today is utter crap! Perhaps we should have a modern pop Demolshion Night for any music post 2010... I would certainly support that!!
There is a lot of nonsense spouted about disco, the disco "movement" and attempts at defining what disc music was. Truth is it's all rather more complex and multi faceted than many of these documentaries and commentaries would have you believe. Disco meant different things to different groups of people and all experiences were valid. It is generally accepted that ground zero fro disco dance culture that grew in the 70s came from Manhattan Island and the growing number of dance clubs that were springing up there. Different clubs attracted different clientele and had varying musical preferences. "Disco Music" is really just an umbrella term, a catch all under which the music that people danced to was placed. There are lots of lazy ill informed stereotypes, urban myths and falsehoods that have grown and taken rot over the decades. Many of these have simply been lifted and repeated in various articles and documentaries without nay form of fact checking or genuine serious research as to the accuracy of information being presented as factual. Fo most middle class white males disco was always a pejorative term and the antipathy directed towards the dance music scene was dripping in. racism and homophobia and a great big helping of complete ignorance. The distorted view of what disco "was" has been reinforced by cherry picking certain negative elements and events that helped to demean and undermine what was really happening. As a result we get Rick Dees and his Disco Duck, Ethel Merman's disco album and dozens of other quick cash ins. Studio 54 is the decadent palace of sin and debauchery that was tearing at the fabric of American society- corrupting the youth. And of course we always have to arrive at the disco sucks movement and the demolition rally in July 79. The Bee Gees also have to be centre stage too. The real people who went regularly went to discos at the height of their popularity know a different truth. It's a very rich and diverse tapestry and it never died- it underwent a rebranding and today it's bigger than ever before. Dance music is the dominant culture around the world. The EDM scene, House Music etc By comparison Rock music has faded and lost its dominance. Although this short video does provide balance it does fall for a few of the tropes. No other musical "genre" has ever been at the receiving end of such violence and hatred. Of course disco took on different forms across the globe and a lot of European influences found their way back to ground zero. Some of the greatest disco music remains mostly hidden from the mainstream even today while people focus on the Bee Gees- a pop group who cynically rode the wave in a bid to revive their flagging careers. There is no doubt the Bee Gees DID create some iconic pop songs that were heavily influenced by disco but in the end the Bee Gees probably contributed as much to the demise of disco...
Seeing Debbie Harry on the thumb nail reminded me she was in a movie I rewatched recently called Videodrome. Good watch especially around holloween.
Disco never fell. They just relabeled it..and it continues today.
Yes, house music and early stuff was quite political.
I was a child during those yearsand the biggest songs of the day defined my childhood, mixed with what else was going on. I don't remember much about the hatred disco had until later on. At least I don't remember it vividly enough to account for those days. When it went away dance music still prevailed in 1980 and the Bee Gees didn't hide away for too long and came back in 1981. Donna Summer still had hits into the 80s and the Rolling Stones repeated their flare for disco in 1980 with "Emotional Rescue". By 1981 my own tastes had changed and my love for The Beatles, Stringsteen, Petty and Mellencamp grew to dominate all that I loved. But I look back and remember disco fondly and remember how much fun it was even though I was too young to participate in much of the culture.
One mistake though; You mentioned "More Than A Woman" dominating the charts. It was never released as a single for the Bee Gees. "Stayin' Alive" and "Night Fever" were the only two disco songs released by the Bee Gees on Saturday Night Fever. Their other hit was the ballad, "How Deep Is Your Love".
Disco was huge well before the Bee Gees
The Bee Gees released Jive Talkin' in 1975 which I think is their first Disco hit before they released You Should Be Dancin'
It’s bizarre how they link the success of it to white band lol
Just like rock and roll, unfortunately music genres didn’t reach their popular maximums (not quality) until a white person became famous for it. Elvis was essential to rocks growth because record labels wouldn’t market chuck berry to the white market. While The Bee Gees weren’t the first, or the most important, they did have big commercial success that a lot of people later on saw as what disco was. Today when people think of disco they think of The Bee Gees and abba if they aren’t super into it, and I’d hardly call most of abbas music disco at all
I think you mean The Brothers Gibb were huge before disco?
@@jamsistireddelusions of grandeur
Thank you for this! I knew most of the history, but didn't realize that Disco Demolition night took place in Chicago. I'm also thankful for the eyewitness account you shared here.
Disco never died, it evolved into HiNRG, new wave, club, disco funk, to the house music pumping the clubs today. Despite the efforts of racists and homophobes, dance culture still won!
Disco sucks
@@chuckenmcnuggets4464 so does your mom
White males killed disco. The Police and other New Wave bands slaughtered that disco pig.
I personally don’t really like disco all that much but I don’t think it deserved the destroy the records level hates it got
If you don't find your pinkie vibrating to a Donna Summer classic then I believe you're dead 😊🙏❤️
@@DaveSCameron true
The disco artists were still talented people who knows how to play instruments and write lyrics unlike some artists today.
Thank you
I love disco music and most music but I did not like some of the Disco culture. The culture I knew about at least. I was 13 in 1980 and it seemed like it glorified drug abuse and materialism, the fancy clothes and arrogant attitudes. Granted I only saw the version media and Saturday Night Fever presented. It wasn't till I was older that I learned that it also embraced diversity, though I think that diversity continued into the '80s and beyond with dance and house music. At the time it also seemed that everybody was screwed up on drugs in that era. I don't know for sure if disco was culture that perpetuated that as I know in the '80s A friend of mine went to a Hank Williams Jr concert and saw rampant drug abuse there. And Stevie Ray Vaughan finally shook the habit in the late '80s shortly before his unfortunate death in a helicopter accident.
The rise and fall of disco is viewed though a very American POV. For the rest of western culture, dance music continued to be huge. The United States mainstream has always been more wary of dance music in general for a multitude of reasons. Dance music in the US has almost always flourished within minority communities or major urban centers (NYC, Chicago, etc....)
I am a musician too. With Disco, Latinized music led to the Salsoul wave; Black music turned into disco-funk/R and B, and the queer movement led to the "glam and drag" of disco itself--especially the fashions and all of the spectacular lighting.
Actually Disco songs were still on the charts in 1980. Lipps Inc., The SOS Band, and even
Diana Ross had hits that year. Even rock bands like Queen,and Pink Floyd had big hits that
had Disco elements in their songs in 1980.
great comment
@@MrPurge11Thank you.
Loved disco as a kid, still love it at 30 years old
So basically your saying that you are a switch hitter
I don't think Disco ever "fell"; fout-on-the-floor just got different names, like "House", "Dance" and "Electro". All the popular acts still make Disco, Kylie Minogue being the most recent and most obvious example of that.
I havent seen your videos foe years. Im glad you grown so much
Disco is my favorite music genre, and I'm not ashamed to admit it!
Please have a listen to this song that pays tribute to the vintage sound of Disco: th-cam.com/video/dkYsw5Bwa8k/w-d-xo.html
I was born in 1968 and was just a kid during this time. But I always loved Disco music and still have many favorite songs from that era that I still listen to!
I was burn in 1973, and remembered hearing Disco music and seeing it everywhere.
I would speak and play it on my parents radio, when they would leave my sister and I with the babysitter.
1978 -1979.
Abba, the Brothers Johnson, Donna Summer, A Taste of Honey ,S.O.S and more.
Lou Garrett, I was made for dancing.
As a child in a Christian household, I couldn't wait for the neighbors to play the songs on their stereo, or Soul train to come on when spent the night over at my babysitter house.
1977-1979 was a big impact on me looking back, having lost a lot in life and my parents.
This brief History of Disco, was every important to fully understand.
I always seen whites, blacks and others coming together in a loving place with the music.
However, I never knew it was based on the LGBTQ foundation.
Disco was truly hated on, however thank God TH-cam and channels like this one.
Time stamped: 8/2/22 -5:13 am.
Your comment is underrated.
Be nice if you could do an hour on this era. There's so much those of us who were young adults during disco never knew. Out on the prairies my only contact was a Columbia Record Club mailing of Donna Summer's Bad Girls which I played really loud while I vacuumed the house.
I would say very roughly correlates as in the 50s jazz and blues were big as well as rock and roll, in the 60s it was Motown and the British Invasion then psychedelia then heavy rock which in the 70s led to heavy metal as well as soul, reggae and punk followed by new wave as we went into the 80s.
Regardless as always I enjoyed your video thanks oh and you forgot the disco version of the Star Wars theme which really was the dregs 😊
Good video. I must say though that the Bee Gees didn’t take a break from music. After 1979, they were busy writing Barbra Streisand’s album “Guilty” released in 1980. They released their next album in 1981 but it only was successful in Europe because of the disco backlash in the US, unfortunately. They continued to write albums for other artists like Kenny Rodgers and Dionne Warwick through the 80s as well, giving them major hits. The American radio didn’t want the Bee Gees, but they wanted their songwriting, evidenced by their numerous number 1s they wrote for these other artists.
I was a club DJ, mostly in the 80's. Disco was supposedly dead and buried by then. And we're supposed to forget that there was a lot of great disco (OK, "post-disco" or dance") music in that era.
Packed clubs were commonplace. Flanigan's Mardi Gras in NE Philly (1984-1985) was legendary, with confetti cannons, impromptu "showstoppers" and girls dancing inside glass eggs. And then came Pulsations nightclub in Glen Mills, PA, a total sensory overload that came complete with a visit by a robot that descended from a spaceship at midnight. In 1999, I found myself playing to an audience of almost 1,000 people on Saturday nights at The Big Kahuna in Delaware.
Today EDM, along with mainstream artists like Lizzo and Dua Lipa have kept the genre alive and well and eventually might spark a full-blown resurgence.
So this whole idea that one record burning by Steve Dahl somehow killed disco is such a bad joke.
I love history disco and mardi gras i gotta look into that🤩
I never heard of disco demo night before this. So I learned something today. I was a teenager back in the 70s. I liked disco music. But I remember that not everybody did. Anyway, I have been listening to a lot of the old disco lately and I really do appreciate the sounds. Good disco is great stuff. Feeling good is the bottom line.
you were there and didnt know ab it! wow😮
@@drowningcrown2293 Well. I grew up in a small town (40,000 people) in western Canada. So I wouldn't say I was there.
Nice. Subscribed.
My dad was a big disco freak in the 70s. Had an afro and wore track suits. He gave my mom a mini disco ball on their 1 year anniversary.
Think I spotted the disco duck in one of your pics 😊 I remember it here in the UK as being popular for a short time when Saturday Night Fever came out but it faded rapidly as punk and rock were big at the time.
Britain had a different youth culture with different groups of teens competing and fighting against each other.
We had groups such as teddy boys, rockers, mods, punks, northern souls fans, skinheads (into 2 tone and ska not originally like the racists skinheads that emerged in the US) and other smaller groups each loyal to their music and against the rest.
When I was 16 I was a long haired rocker into heavy rock but I also loved Motown but to hear it I had to sneak round to a friend’s house who was a Mod (we had a 60s mod revival in the late 70s early 80s due to bands like the jam and the film Quadrophenia by the who) and listen to his records as my rocker mates would have taken the piss if they knew I liked it.
The tribal youth culture faded out by the end of the 80s with the rise of acid house and the rave scene.
I still love all sorts of music now at 57 and will often play a mix of classic rock, Motown, Beatles and blues when I’m driving.
Cheers from England
The first punks I met were into Bowie and Roxy and would go to gay clubs, not nessesrally Gay just those clubs were safer to be weird...
What an excellent comment. Glad some one paid attention to the history of music.
@@matthewmckenzie3394 thank you Matthew. Teen culture in Britain was very different from the USA back then, it still is but to a lesser degree now as the world is much more closely connected.
@@matthewmckenzie3394 if you haven’t seen Quadrophenia or a British film about the youth prison system of the late seventies called Scum I highly recommend both.
Scum is v violent for its time but includes some of the cast from Quadrophenia including Phil Daniels and Ray Winstone who in both films give great performances.
If you do watch Quadrophenia the scene where Jimmy’s scooter is run over and Jimmy is ranting at the postman Phil Daniels made the lines up on the spot and the actor playing the postman was genuinely shocked by Phil’s language and brilliantly played reaction.
Disco didn't die...it morphed into Dance and Techno....and some EMD as well.
So it... only got worse.
Not even close, no
@@jona3797 So,, what did late period Larry Levan or Mancusio play? House and early techno did feature..
@@ignatiusjackson235 okay Steve Dahl
@@timmmahhhh I'll take that as a compliment.
Thank you very much for this James..
Nu disco is big now.Disco never died,only transformed and we still like David Mancuso,Larry Levan,Walter Gibbons and many other ones.John Morales and Dimitri from Paris are huge today.
Nice comment, lots of styles fused
@@MrPurge11 Thanks
Reminds me of the rise and fall of the TRL-era bubblegum pop and R&B around the turn of the millenium - Got popular in 1997/98, absolutely dominated the pop scene in 1999/2000, but then it was on life support by mid-2001. The demise of both genres were supposedly put down to some heavily-publicised world-changing event (i.e. Disco demolition night in 1979 and 9/11 in 2001), even though the real cause of it was market fatigue and over-saturation, and over the next couple of years after it died, there would be one more big release from an A-list pop-star keeping it hanging by a thread (MJ's "Thriller" album and Kylie Minogue's "Fever" album)
This video is so good, thank you for making it
While I agree that some of the early "Disco" was 70's great R&B But I'm going to push back a bit here. The consumerism of the genre took over very early. As a 20 something at the time who worked in University Radio, the clubs that used to feature live acts mostly dried up. Disco bars were pick-up bars. To see a live act mostly meant going to a "Concert" not a bar or a club. Punk acts, at least in Toronto, were a reaction to this lack of live venues often in places that never used to feature music of any kind.
Stomp bye The Brothers Johnson goes so hard. I can't see how music like that fell out of style. it's still a vibe to this day especially while cruising around in the Crown Vic.
Disco never really died. Now they are called Retros. I was attending Gay-Mixed discos. Had a blast, for nearly 5 years. Get out there on the floor and it all disappeared. Was also boycottiing xxxx Anita B and Florida Orange Juice. My body isn't able to dance for hours these days. Brings back funky, fun memories.
Thanks for the context. That was really cool.
The 70s/80s had the best music..all of it..rock..R&B..PoP..jazz..wish i could of grew up 10 years earlier!
I didn't know disco had so much history. Also liked the images of supergrass and Phil Collins/Genesis
Music is nourishment for our souls ✌️
I remember leaving the 6th grade that summer and disco was all over the radio, by the time I started 7th grade in the fall new wave music took over & the 80's officially started.
Disco was beautiful. It became cartoonish because it became so popular. People’s opposition to the actual genre is so irrational.
People "hated" it to fit in with their rock-loving friends who couldn't dance.
Loved disco….still do 🎉
Please have a listen to this song that pays tribute to the vintage sound of Disco: th-cam.com/video/dkYsw5Bwa8k/w-d-xo.html
Yo this is sick!
Italo Disco in Italy continued doing their thang in the early 80's.
This was a great listening!
70s music was all about rock - the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zep, the Eagles, Pink Floyd etc.
Disco was a fun break from some of the heaviness of 70s rock and bad news on the TV (Watergate, Vietnam, and oil crises), as was country rock like Lynyrd Skynryd ( so many Ys...) and the Charlie Daniels Band.
Also popular in my house were pop singers like the Captain and Tennille, Debby Boone, the yacht rock gang, and earnest songwriters like Carol King, James Taylor and Gordon Lightfoot.
It was a fun time and I'm glad it was my childhood..
Rise by Herb Albert is easy listening but its also tied to disco so its not 0 disco records on the top 10 at that time, its actually 1! Herb Albert is a smart guy, he knew people hated disco so concealed under an instrumental song and made seem like an AC record but fused some disco sounds such as the beat and accompaniment!
Whaat?!? No _KC and the Sunshine Band_ ?!? They're responsible for the entire Miami Junkanoo/Electric boogaloo sound that became disco, with over 10 top ten hits--five of which were #1.
Good synopsis and concise summary!
Here is the truth..... Rock music got huge... The record companies had to pay out huge sums of money because they didnt own the music. They wanted to end that and push rock music out... So the music companies said that 'prog' rock were dinosaurs... Pink Floyd, Led Zeppling, The Who... were attacked in the press along with Yes, Genesis, Styx... etc.. The companies brought in punk music to show everyone that you didnt have to know a thing about playing an instrument or singing... disco... all the time disco... the companies stopped printing rock records.. cut back on the production and made disco flashy and new and all over every record store, while rock was put in the back with little to no fanfare... at the same time, the companies reduced their royalty rate to new artists... made sure they could never get the control that artists like Led Zepplin and Pink Floyd had... Disco was never threatening, it never told you what the government was doing.. Neither did punk.... until the Clash did... and then they were taken down also... Chicago went from making songs like A song for Richard and his Friends... to... 'If you leave me now'.... non controversial... non threatening... Disco... was dancing... fucking .... and cocaine... repeat...
Don't forget about the clothes that went with these polar musical differences 🎶🎵🎤🎺
Yep, this is very true. The entertainment industry is filled with slime balls and dirt.
Everybody knows that funk was the real music of black liberation. Disco was just a watered down version of that. George Clinton hated it, and rightfully so.
Disco has never died, but it has evolved into post-disco/boogie/underground dance, which remained popular until 1984, the year hip hop starred to become more popular..
Ello from the Philippines!
I was a teen buying disco records, and loved the genre..while overall, it did die down..it slowly morphed in simply dance music, and lost the moniker disco....I read the Bee Gees had those songs ready long before the movie was filmed and they built scenes around them..meaning if they just released them on an album on their own, it would have been a passing fancy, as many popular artists released disco albums like Rod Stewart, The Rolling Stones and Barbra Streisand, that went on to have great careers.
Good article on Disco! As I experienced it, it was a joyous music and time that was indeed driven by both Black and LBGTQ groups that eventually, everyone got as it was just so damn fun! But, of course, the damnable puritanical element had to jump in and bash it, just like it did for so many youth music art forms. But it, and the joyous feeling from it, continues to this day, probably best in the EDM and EDC scenes where people are having a great time listening and interacting with the music, may it live forever (and religion just die already, FFS!)
ha ha! great comment
I will always love Disco!
Disco did died but in that same city CHICAGO ,NEW YORK ,AND OVERSEAS BROUGHT BACK DISCO BUT USING DIFFERENT GENRE LIKE CHICAGO CREATED HOUSE MUSIC A SON AND DAUGHTER OF DISCO KEPT THE SAME BPM BUT SPEED UP THE DRUM,MORE BASE TO IT
I loved the 70s punk faze of sex pistols and other bands
It was just fantastic, we in England had the Jam The Police, The Clash /Pistols and All ti6a backdrop of Disco fever and Joy Divisionesque sounds, Liverpool was an incredible place in the late 1970s early 80s 📚👉🙏😊
i was born in '69 & my 1st memories of 'black dance music' (we didn't know it was called 'disco,' yet--& i was borne in a very eisenhower era looking whitewashed, boring place) were the go go dancers on Electric Company & morgan freeman spun the discs!! as a 4 yr old, i recognized this music was better & more addictive than any rock or pop on the radio. go go was still around then so the girls wore go go boots & danced in cages but the music was . . . disco!! then the flutes & the violens started chiming in around '75 & it was, like, 'uh oh!! this is getting REAL!!' by the time the bee gees did their thing w/disco it was already 'dead'--although still 'going on,' in a way; anyone who was alive then, i think, knows what i mean . . .
Do you know what whitewashed means? I’m not sure you do.
I think the pre Saturday night fever disco is much better.
It honestly kind of reminds me of the things with rap music cuz it seems like it's all some weird formula of face tattoos lol
Epic
This video is good as a summary
I was there back East in Hartford Conn in 1975 & travel w/ my high school sweetheart turned gay - to the hottest discos from New York to Yale& Boston All gay /straight came it was the best dancing &exciting music But hows DonnaSummer not mentioned. Greatest disco queen of all. She turned disco on. When I came home to LA she was hot. All wanted her. I wasn’t into Bee Gees
I’m a classic rock grad but disco was great then because DonnaSummer existed. She was Disco
thank you so mcuh
And then came "Club & House Music"✊✊✊
Disco was from the mid 70s-late 70s. Ok I stand corrected: the 70s. Also: The Hustle started in the late 60s if not earlier.
It was the gay and lesbian community, not the LBGTQ (+) community because that didn't exist back then. There was only the gay and lesbian community.
That’s not true in the 70’s there was a trans community too, and some of those people are still alive and now don’t fall into the simple “gay” “lesbian” “straight” categories, they might be demiromantic or asexual so I think lgbtq+ is the better choice of words, at least for this time period, queer also works too.
It's funny, this has so many parallels with Nu Metal in the late 90's - early 2000's.
We had to pretend to hate disco because that is what rockers did. But eventually we all had the Saturday night Fever album. I know at least in the NYC area where I grew up you couldn't avoid disco. It was blasting everywhere out of cars and parks and boom boxes and stores and events etc. That just was the 70's. I was too young for discos but imagine it was a blast. My mom used to take us disco roller skating I do remember that.
Disco never really died in the rest of the world. So, when City Pop blew up in recent years it was a new sound to a lot of people.
What do you think about Rap
This would been nice DURING Pride Month, Hobs.
I dont know why people need to hate, if you like a song or band, then that’s your call, do not hate others for their choices that are different.
Many people hated the fact that disco songs made up the majority of the mainstream music being played on the radio, so they wanted to change that.
I still love disco. The soundtrack of Looking For Mr. Goodbar is one of the best in cinematic history. I consider it more radical than punk because it represented expression of many of the marginalized. Great video. Thank you.
Liked 💯👍
no one killed Disco so get used to it .Disco is alive and kinking and shows no signs of going away
Disco is just r&b at fast pace
Good day
Disco - good then, good now! Many of the songs are complete standards of the era in spite of the 'intellectuals' opinions.
I see this happening with rap
I give rap music ten or fifteen years from now and then it dies. Most younger rappers are now being killed either they were murdered or had a drug overdose. I am a black woman I used to love rap music. I don't listen to it anymore. By looking back black people should have let go of rap music a long time ago. It ruin the black women image and poisoned black boys' minds. C. Delores Tucker was right all along.
Next the rise and fall of punk
Disco was the 70's version of 60's bubble gum music. The vast majority of the record-buying public, including the minority groups mentioned, didn't like the way disco crowded out other music. Everybody liked some of the songs, but like most music a lot of it wasn't all that good right from the beginning. I think that people still like the really good records, but disco did overstay its welcome because it was limited in how it could develop musically (not everyone can be the Bee Gees). It's a lot easier to appreciate it for the genre it is, now, but it was too limited in variety to last any longer than it did as a dominant style.
Today's music is very much tinged with disco influence, especially anything that wants to sound like "dance music". But what modern music makers primarily learned from disco was how to be formulaic, which is what many people hated about music then, and also now.
YAMAHA DX7 keyboard, Disco killer.
In the second half of the 60s it was Bubblegum music. There is a video on youtube about bobblegum music.
What killed disco was Yental Streisand. When she started laying down disco tracks, it was over.
I don't believe disco ever died I went to New York and went to a place they played some
really great records and ended up dancing for ages
disco is a feeling I who have nothing by Sylvester is a classic
the disco sucks stuff was like the Nazis
How do you make a video about disco and not mention Donna Summers?
@10:34 - It's funny that you didn't highlight Chic "Good Times" and Kiss "I Was Made for Lovin' You", both disco songs or songs heavily influenced by disco music. 🤣🤣🤣
Plus those communities you forgot women, like madonna or blondie DH who were very fond of postdisco. The Best female performance are Black R&B disco funky HiNergy Garage House EDM artists without a doubt. This was the only genre with an european significant production (village people giorgio morodor....) and US was very jealous. Then, the monopole of the arrogant conservative US music industry reigned in the early 80's and had a negative impact in the creation process.
I did. 8/11/1979
Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine band and the Bee Gees.
Great video! Its a: fun, fast and actually interesting kind of music when considering the clever buildup and drop down medleys. I've probably been a fan since 1995!
I was *_11_* most of '95 and gradually got more interested that much more in my 20s- I'm now in my last days of *_*38_** and it's really made a personal culture mark on me-
I like in literally this often order: Disco, Rock and Metal!
yes disco teen here in the 1970's ..im turning 60 soon :)
I wish they did this for rap. Rap is new disco and need to die.
Go to sleep grandpa
@@wasnatehere I am 37 years old. Too young to be grandpa.
And English 🏴 history! *
Why does this otherwise good history of disco have a thumbnail photo that implies that Debby Harry killed disco? The video doesn't even mention her, and Blondie's "Heart of Glass" was a solid contribution to the disco canon.
Disco is okay... It had it's time in music history
Definitely, and it was reinvented in the rave era
Disco makes Rap sound like fukn Mozart!!! SMGDMFH!
✌🌎❤
You should have mentioned Flamingo.
Disco may have started black, Latino and gay underground, but it didn't take off until it was straight white and mainstream. And that is what eventually caused it to be renamed dance music.
The Loft was not the first! You forgot to mention Francis Grasso who invented beatmatching where Nicky, Frankie and Larry learned from. Nice broad overview though.
8:43-8:48: "...as record labels began releasing tacky and lifeless music, the word 'disco' was put on anything and everything to make it sell..."
Three of the six groups you display here are Dutch. Hm. Thank you from The Netherlands. 😉
Its harder to find bad disco photos than you think lol
Speaking as someone who is a massive fan of both Iron Maiden (adore Bruce Dicknson!) & the Village People (My favorite is the lovely David Hodo as the constructon worker!) I must say Disco NEVER DIED!
Disco smply became dance, house & techno (which I also love!) Disco just evolved & morphed into new genres However. if you look (& listen) to music of the 60's through to the late 90's, at least it was GOOD music. The so called music of today is utter crap! Perhaps we should have a modern pop Demolshion Night for any music post 2010... I would certainly support that!!
There is a lot of nonsense spouted about disco, the disco "movement" and attempts at defining what disc music was. Truth is it's all rather more complex and multi faceted than many of these documentaries and commentaries would have you believe. Disco meant different things to different groups of people and all experiences were valid. It is generally accepted that ground zero fro disco dance culture that grew in the 70s came from Manhattan Island and the growing number of dance clubs that were springing up there. Different clubs attracted different clientele and had varying musical preferences. "Disco Music" is really just an umbrella term, a catch all under which the music that people danced to was placed. There are lots of lazy ill informed stereotypes, urban myths and falsehoods that have grown and taken rot over the decades. Many of these have simply been lifted and repeated in various articles and documentaries without nay form of fact checking or genuine serious research as to the accuracy of information being presented as factual. Fo most middle class white males disco was always a pejorative term and the antipathy directed towards the dance music scene was dripping in. racism and homophobia and a great big helping of complete ignorance. The distorted view of what disco "was" has been reinforced by cherry picking certain negative elements and events that helped to demean and undermine what was really happening. As a result we get Rick Dees and his Disco Duck, Ethel Merman's disco album and dozens of other quick cash ins. Studio 54 is the decadent palace of sin and debauchery that was tearing at the fabric of American society- corrupting the youth. And of course we always have to arrive at the disco sucks movement and the demolition rally in July 79. The Bee Gees also have to be centre stage too. The real people who went regularly went to discos at the height of their popularity know a different truth. It's a very rich and diverse tapestry and it never died- it underwent a rebranding and today it's bigger than ever before. Dance music is the dominant culture around the world. The EDM scene, House Music etc By comparison Rock music has faded and lost its dominance. Although this short video does provide balance it does fall for a few of the tropes. No other musical "genre" has ever been at the receiving end of such violence and hatred. Of course disco took on different forms across the globe and a lot of European influences found their way back to ground zero. Some of the greatest disco music remains mostly hidden from the mainstream even today while people focus on the Bee Gees- a pop group who cynically rode the wave in a bid to revive their flagging careers. There is no doubt the Bee Gees DID create some iconic pop songs that were heavily influenced by disco but in the end the Bee Gees probably contributed as much to the demise of disco...
Great comment, thanks for sharing.
Disco, in other forms, is alive and well, and more intricately so each time.