When I read information about some of the uptempo hits for most of the '80s (including Madonna-styled dance pop), I am increasingly seeing the dance music (including 12" singles) being referred to as "disco", as we all know a very hated word during the '80s. Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby wouldn't seem too out of place to most actual '80s dance hits as the former was synthesized. But it's definately a trend I've noticed over the past several years.

Once Disco died, Hi-NRG music took it's place.                                                                                                           

When I read information about some of the uptempo hits for most of the '80s (including Madonna-styled dance pop), I am increasingly seeing the dance music (including 12" singles) being referred to as "disco", as we all know a very hated word during the '80s. Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby wouldn't seem too out of place to most actual '80s dance hits as the former was synthesized. But it's definately a trend I've noticed over the past several years.


it isn't whoever called it disco is wrong and needed a better fact checker.

When I read information about some of the uptempo hits for most of the '80s (including Madonna-styled dance pop), I am increasingly seeing the dance music (including 12" singles) being referred to as "disco", as we all know a very hated word during the '80s. Donna Summer's Love To Love You Baby wouldn't seem too out of place to most actual '80s dance hits as the former was synthesized. But it's definately a trend I've noticed over the past several years.


Whoever said 80's dance is disco needs to be slapped!  >:(

I wouldn't classify the majority of 80s dance music as disco.  There are plenty of trax considered to be Italo-Disco, or Hi-NRG as Jason stated.  Some examples:

"Living On Video" - Trans-X
"Money" - Mozzart
"Love Spy" - Mike Mareen
"Hypnotic Tango" - My Mine
"Color My Love" - Fun Fun

Additionally, remixers such as Shep Pettibone used a lot of disco elements (primarily beats) for 12" versions:

"Into The Groove" (Shep Pettibone Remix) - Madonna check out the beats around 3'09"

And when you have someone like Nile Rodgers from Chic on production in the early 80's, Duran Duran's Night Version of "Hungry Like The Wolf" gets a disco feel to it.

There are tracks beyond the 80s that have some disco elements IMO:

"The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind) - The Bucketheads (samples Chicago's "Street Player")
"Don't Call Me Baby" - Madison Avenue
"Here" - Luscious Jackson
"Lola's Theme" - Shapshifters (aka Shape:UK)

  I see the Bananarama cover of Shocking Blue's "Venus" included on some disco compilations.  What that's supposed to mean I leave to the musical hairsplitters...

Disco wasn't called Disco after 1979 once the Chicago "Disco Sucks" campaign came.

But...this doesn't mean the Disco beat died...it evolved.

Take Michel Jackson's "PYT", it has a Disco beat and sounds like a Disco Song. But since it was released in the 80's...Disco was what they called 'square'...so it wasn't called Disco. And Aqua's "Barbie Girl" is a Dance Song...which has its roots in Disco!

It's like calling songs by 1970 'Psychedelic Music' was passe since the Hippie Dream basically ended with Altamont.

I wouldn't classify the majority of 80s dance music as disco.  There are plenty of trax considered to be Italo-Disco, or Hi-NRG as Jason stated.  Some examples:

"Living On Video" - Trans-X
"Money" - Mozzart
"Love Spy" - Mike Mareen
"Hypnotic Tango" - My Mine
"Color My Love" - Fun Fun

Additionally, remixers such as Shep Pettibone used a lot of disco elements (primarily beats) for 12" versions:

"Into The Groove" (Shep Pettibone Remix) - Madonna check out the beats around 3'09"

And when you have someone like Nile Rodgers from Chic on production in the early 80's, Duran Duran's Night Version of "Hungry Like The Wolf" gets a disco feel to it.

There are tracks beyond the 80s that have some disco elements IMO:

"The Bomb! (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind) - The Bucketheads (samples Chicago's "Street Player")
"Don't Call Me Baby" - Madison Avenue
"Here" - Luscious Jackson
"Lola's Theme" - Shapshifters (aka Shape:UK)




Nice selection of italo tunes there!!  I agree that alot of 80s music is disco-esque. Especially, Hi-NRG music from the early 80's.  But I have never heard it specifically called "disco music."  I think that term is reserved for the 70s disco music we all know.

Disco wasn't called Disco after 1979 once the Chicago "Disco Sucks" campaign came.

But...this doesn't mean the Disco beat died...it evolved.



Exactamundo!

People like to dance and have a good time, so disco didn't die.  IMO, a lot of the sentiment behind the "Disco Sucks" campaign was racist and homophobic.  After all in the U.S. was very much an urban thing, a Black and Latino thing, and definitely a gay thing.  There are a lot of people around the country who don't like "them kind" of people.  

There was pseudo-populist argument some disco-haters tried to make.  Yeah, it was hard to get into Studio 54.  Was it any easier to get backstage at a Rolling Stones concert?  How many people got invited to Mick Fleetwood's famous coke parties?  Not that many.  This didn't stop anybody from buying and enjoying Rolling Stones and Fleetwood-Mack records.  Yet it was disco that had to answer to the charge of high-fashion elitism.  Plenty of that in rock music too.  

There were also charges levied against disco that it was inane.  Plenty of it was, but here again the rock 'n' rolling disco-haters demonstrated hypocrisy.  I once heard Paul Stanley from KISS* scoffing about how disco songs were just about what a cool guy you were and all the great partying you were going to do that night.  And your band's big hit went:  "I wanna rock 'n' roll all night and party every day!"  Okay, Paul, whatever you say.

*who also laid down some disco beats and made some phat cash: "I was made for lovin' you, baby, you were made for lovin' me..."
::)

Of course, I'm not saying that everybody who hated disco was a bigot or a hypocrite.  Lots of people my age and older who remember it first-hand just hated the way it sounded, and the music industry was indeed force-feeding disco sounds into everything from hard rock to country to jazz.  That's the one legitimate "Disco Sucks" argument.  You couldn't get away from it in 1979!
http://www.inthe00s.com/smile/11/cwm10.gif

Agree with most viewpoints on this thread so far.  I think for me disco died a death around the fall of '81, and it was really only kept alive by bands such as Ottwan and Liquid Gold.