I mean, this was one of the arguments used at the time. It was a pretty bad argument though. Disco is a pretty rich genre whose influences can still be felt in Dance music today.
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Why was Disco so hated in the 80s through to the 00s in the US?
- Thread starter TheEchosOfTheCyborg
- Start date
I mean, this was one of the arguments used at the time. It was a pretty bad argument though. Disco is a pretty rich genre whose influences can still be felt in Dance music today.
The You're Wrong About episode I linked to earlier in the thread challenges a lot of these assumptions and proves them wrong. Very much worth listening to.
Yeah. I love The Bee Gees, and the last documentary really hammered home how insane radio stations got to where you'd get their songs back to back to back and could hardly hear anything but them and disco. The quality of disco also went down a fuckton as capitalism tried cashing in on it. Not saying this was all of it, but it certainly hurt.
OP, you answered all your own questions in your first post. Congrats!
Disco never went away. It just moved underground and overseas, biding its time. Disco fused itself with other sounds over time, and classic disco itself finally had a mainstream resurgence in the late '90s, when enough time had passed since the backlash for young people to "ironically" rediscover it.
In certain areas. Disco evolved into House music. But, I too believe that racism and homophobia were the causes to disco dying.
I think it may have something to do with a generational divide. Sort of a counter culture movement as the next generation rejects what the previous one enjoyed. Probably similar to what people in the 70s and 80s thought of hippies from the 60s. Or what the generation from the 60s felt about the previous generation as well.
Your points in the OP are probably correct as well. Anything viewed as a threat for stupid reasons was certainly rejected.
Your points in the OP are probably correct as well. Anything viewed as a threat for stupid reasons was certainly rejected.
Yes. North American. Disco was the punchline for many jokes throughout my entire childhood.
It was kind of the opposite. It was a reactionary rejection and suppression of the new culture by those with the loudest voices. It was also part of a wave of conservatism pushing into the US at the tail end of the '70s.
YURP.
Compounded by white people trying to unsuccessfully repackage the sound of the late 70's in early aughts.
It was never about the music, it was about getting the marginalized out of the public eye.
I don't know if I would go as far as to say that EDM is modern disco because most EDM is just cribbing from europe's dance scene in the 80's and 90's, but the motivation for those songs definitely had a lot of disco origins, so in a round about way, it sort of is.
I agree but it's not unique to disco. What makes disco different from rock and roll?
How many women, blackfolk or queerfolk did you see in rock and roll in 1978?
Music was oversaturated with disco tunes. In addition it was getting cheesy and formulaic. It was even got to a point that rock acts were starting to write and record Disco music. Paul Stanley from Kiss bet he could easily write a hit Disco song and he did with I Was Made For Loving You. It became a massive hit but alienated a big chunk of their audience and their subsequent three albums were less succesfull because of it until they took their makeup off in 1983.
Well I'm thinking about the early origins of rock and roll and the origins of disco. Disco and Rock weren't at the same stage in their development in 1978 so I don't think it makes sense to compare them at that exact year.
I always thought that Disco was the actual location, and the music was more pop/funk?
Because 70's funk had some awesome stuff too.
to answer the actual question from the OP, yeah I think you nailed it.
Because 70's funk had some awesome stuff too.
to answer the actual question from the OP, yeah I think you nailed it.
I mean I compare them at that year because the following year, we had a highly racist event in Chicago who's cause was placed on the shoulders of Disco, when it was really white middle america thrusting their frustrations of having to see people who don't look like them becoming affluent. The strike against Disco was never about the music, it was about the idea of putting White America in the forefront again, when they already were in the forefront.
Which sounds very familiar in 2022.
It's so weird, because the 60s was seen as like a sexual revolution in the UK and the US, but as the 70s went through people started to get more and more conservative. I'd love to understand why if there's any people who know/explain about it.
Disco's association with queer culture and the cultures of POC is WAY bigger than rock's associations in the same places.
I've recently come to see disco as a movement that challenged masculinity head-on. When I was a kid in the 90s I legit enjoyed it, but never admitted that to anyone but my mom. Liking disco was akin to being a boy but still liking "boy bands". That is, it opened you up to insults of the very homophobic variety.
I do also agree with the theory that the backlash was part of an underlying homophobia but this is definitely part of it. When you start getting artists not known for the music and novelty songs you know the genre is on its way out. You have Rick Dees singing Disco Duck and a disco Star Wars album. It's not a genre that was treated with respect towards the end there.
But every genre gets this. Just look at fast food chains releasing mixtapes today.
This played a huge part of it imo.
My parents loved disco but they admit almost every song on the radio had the same beat just with different lyrics.
I'm thinking about way back to rock's origins though like the 50s, it came straight up from black america. though maybe rock still had that masculine feel that made it applicable to be co-opted rather than suppressed.
It's Newton's Third Law. "Every action has an equal an opposite reaction". Though outside of physics it is sometimes not so equal. Every revolution has a counter-revolution though. The French Revolution has a thermidorian reaction, America elects Barack Obama and then Donald Trump. After the 60s, the US elects Nixon.
In as short of a time? Disco exploded in less than a decade and became mainstream fast. If you have everyone pumping out disco records with varying levels of quality in less than 10 years you are going to see people get tired of it quickly.
I used to be so confused when as a kid relatives would talk about going to the Discotek, so it's essentially an American phenomena to hate on Disco.
White people far removed from the culture appropriating said culture for profit while watering it down to the point of over saturation? The hell you say.
Sarcasm aside, I definitely buy that part of the reason for disco's death was the, "it's fucking cheesy and everywhere and I hate it" mentality. It's likely a very small part of it, mind. Though I'd assume it's definitely seen as the main reason for a lot of us that grew up far from the culture in the 'burbs. It wasn't until I started studying social justice and that sort of thing that I saw the connections between racism and homophobia with the collapse of disco and its surrounding culture.
Queen, Fleetwood Mac/Stevie Nicks, Heart, Thin Lizzy, Blondie, Elton John, Cher, The Talking Heads, Judas Priest.
Those are a few that come to mind.
Lol! bro, I was a teen when Backstreet Boys and N'SYNC were at their peak, there was no way me in middle school would admit to liking their music. It wasn't until I was in college that I felt liberated.
It's definitely not uncommon, and also comes in waves. "Bubblegum pop" could be seen as the over saturation of early pop music into an easily marketable brand.
Hair metal, grunge, gangsta rap, bro country, all of those can easily be looked at from the same lens as you're looking at disco. Starts off small, suddenly a big hit or two out of nowhere, other bands from the origins get big, outside acts adopt the sound, record labels force their acts into the sound, sound becomes over saturated, sound dies, some people maintain the sound until it comes back or is never seen in the mainstream again.
I wasn't there, but from what I understand it was overplayed to the point of self-parody.
There was no backlash in other parts of the world, where the genre naturally evolved using synthetizers and then I guess became an underground-ish phenomenon in the US with breakdancing, where many late Euro-disco songs that were used when it was still in its infancy. In my ignorance I could also argue that New Wave has its roots as an evolution of disco music.
There was no backlash in other parts of the world, where the genre naturally evolved using synthetizers and then I guess became an underground-ish phenomenon in the US with breakdancing, where many late Euro-disco songs that were used when it was still in its infancy. In my ignorance I could also argue that New Wave has its roots as an evolution of disco music.
Yup, and then bands like The Cars, Blondie, The Police, Duran Duran, The Talking Heads, Devo, ect. Emerged with fresh sounds with unique images and began to take over once MTV launched.
Disco, as with anything black people are heavily involved in, was whitewashed to high heaven so that it could become palatable to white audiences.
Y'all now know this music collectively referred to as electronica, which now exists with virtually no association to black people whatsoever in the mainstream.
Y'all now know this music collectively referred to as electronica, which now exists with virtually no association to black people whatsoever in the mainstream.
In addition to the Southern Strategy that was already mentioned, the '70s recession, the energy crisis, the beginning of the decline in manufacturing jobs, the winding down of the Space Race, urban decline, and losing the Vietnam War knocked a lot of the enthusiasm out of people. It's a situation kind of like now where a large portion of the population was pretty damn miserable.
The 80s were such a wild hate-filled time period with Reagan being a phenomenon and the AIDS hysteria fueling homophobia so it makes sense that Disco demolition was a way to unleash more hatred.
Racism with a heavy dash of homophobia. Lets say 60% 40% the recipe called for, lol.
Disco was oversaturated but was still the choice music for tastemakers and cool city clubs until the backlash.
You had some genres come fill in the gaps; hip-hop started coming into it's own and the new wave backlash to punk lead to more danceable rock music.
The irony as been pointed out is that those clubs and turntables never stopped: black folks singlehandedly morphed it into house/techno with it largely ignored in America until Europe sold it back as a primarily white art form. Irony is while most American fans have no idea about the relationship between the black club underground and EDM, you had white European Dj's soft marketing themselves as black folks from Detroit/Chicago since they felt that's where the 'authentic' shit came from.
www.npr.org
Disco was oversaturated but was still the choice music for tastemakers and cool city clubs until the backlash.
You had some genres come fill in the gaps; hip-hop started coming into it's own and the new wave backlash to punk lead to more danceable rock music.
The irony as been pointed out is that those clubs and turntables never stopped: black folks singlehandedly morphed it into house/techno with it largely ignored in America until Europe sold it back as a primarily white art form. Irony is while most American fans have no idea about the relationship between the black club underground and EDM, you had white European Dj's soft marketing themselves as black folks from Detroit/Chicago since they felt that's where the 'authentic' shit came from.
'Give It Up For DJ Blackface!' : Code Switch
This week, we follow the strange trend of white dance-music DJs who pass themselves off as black artists. Gene talks to legendary House music DJ Ron Trent. The European producer Guy Tavares chimes in from The Netherlands on what he sees as overhyped controversy. Piotr Orlov, who covers dance...
www.npr.org
Disco is at the foundation of most electronic dance music. House and Techno are extensions of disco, created by disco DJs, remixing disco tracks.
Disco was absorbed by the mainstream almost immediately after it's 'demise'. Duran Duran had a lot of disco elements. Madonna had a lot of disco elements. Even 'rock' acts like ZZ Top started using disco elements like drum machines and synths. It's fingerprints were quickly everywhere.