By Eric Grigs | December 21, 2019

Say the word disco and most people roll their eyes. It’s all about bad Party City Halloween costumes and that tragic period of bad music, right? I am here to tell you there’s surprisingly a lot to learn from disco, from its underground beginnings to its “dying days” as the 1970s came to a close. So how did a once subversive, cultural phenomenon—now nearing a half-century in age—become a musical punchline?

For the record (pun intended), I love and respect both early and late American disco periods that fall quite neatly within a span of one decade. And I've watched through the years as any music sounding even remotely like disco had to be labeled ‘house’ or even the more generic ‘dance’ moniker in order to avoid the disco scarlet letter (save for Italo-Disco in the 80s).

But is that starting to change? Has enough time and distance passed that we are now able to look at disco with a more objective and forgiving lens? It seems so, and its resurgence is coming forward in bops like Dua Lipa’s “Don't Start Now” or Mary J. Blige’s “Only Love.” Are these the glimmers of a new era of disco beginning? Hey, why not, everything else is being rebooted!

Growing up primarily in the 80s (the aftermath of peak disco years), I was more familiar with later 70s radio hits and the mainstream records my parents played. Unsurprisingly, as a suburban white mom of the time, my mother was a big ABBA fan. But it wasn’t until decades later I realized disco was way more than just ABBA and whatever Casey Kasem would play on his top 40 countdown. Lately, I’ve wanted to explore more deeply this feel-good genre.

So, of course, I turned first to social media.

I began the journey with a simple Instagram post before a work trip, hoping to fill up a new Spotify playlist for my travel. I asked my followers to recommend some disco tracks that weren't the obvious smashes—give me some deep cuts and forgotten hits. Suzi Lane, Madleen Kane, Revanche, Sylvester, Linda Clifford, and France Joli were all suggested, among others. And once I gave this new playlist a road test, I was hungry to hear more. And eager to know why jams like the ones on the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack or “I Will Survive” came to define the disco genre, instead of other tracks like Odyssey’s “Native New Yorker” or Don Ray and Cerrone’s “Got to Have Lovin’,” both of which slapped just as hard at the time but never stuck around in people's consciousness over time in the same way.

Origin stories are both tricky (and somewhat boring), but here goes. It seems obvious—but must be said—that you cannot separate disco from dancing. Discotheque is a French word that literally means a library, or collection of phonograph records. It also references the underground clubs of WWII-era occupied Paris during the late 30s and early 40s. Money was tight, and some clubs saved a bit by not hiring a live orchestra or band. Instead, they played recorded music that people would dance to. And not surprisingly, the type of music played at these clubs—mostly American swing and jazz—was considered immoral and on the banned list by the Nazis due to its popularity with those it considered degenerates: gays, Jews, people of color, and other targeted groups. This music that moved them was born from early 30s American culture, a time of Prohibition and speakeasies.

History would repeat itself in a similar way—70s DJs developed their sound and craft at private house parties (particularly where men could dance with men free from fear of arrest) before moving to bigger underground clubs and dance spaces that would spring up later. Soon, the music and the place became synonymous with the same shortened word—disco. (Fran Lebowitz once remarked that broke New Yorkers frequented discos because their apartments were so small and shitty, you’d rather go out when gathering with friends.) These social hubs were inhabited by an eclectic community of minorities pushed to the margins of the mainstream music and political scene, largely gays, blacks, and women. In her recent autobiography, Grace Jones notes how disco united people with “one singular sound, radical new power being generated by society’s frustrated outcasts.” Outside the clubs, these outcasts accelerated their fight for visibility and equal rights.

The earliest songs that grew into what we’d eventually classify as disco came from black music, African beats. But it was a post-Motown sound, one that melded and layered on elements of jazz, vocal, swing, soul, and funk over that driving beat. And it was a genre of music that little attention was being paid by rock critics, either because they couldn’t wrap their heads around it or because they willfully ignored its popularity based on who were the drivers of the sound.

Most people also think disco is all style over substance, that it was a rejection of 60s social awareness. And that its music was fueled only by drugs and sex. While this can be true of its mass-market, later period—like the Studio 54 scene that was famous for excess, celebrity, and exclusivity—really, the glamorous appearances disco kept up were a mirrored reflection of the same aspirations of club-goers and swing kids from wartime jazz culture. Once again, the economy was down, unemployment was up, and the sexual revolution of the prior decade turned things on its head for many. Going out and dancing your troubles away at night was a different kind of revolution. After all, the problems would still be there in the morning. The hate, the racism, the disempowerment would be there too. But for tonight, they were kings and queens at the clubs—tight subcultures that were largely hidden from the rest of America.

Nile Rodgers, co-founder of the trailblazing disco group Chic, once described the years like this: “Disco was the only time we were equal. No one cared whether you were black or white—no one even knew. We were using the culture and the clubs to elevate our thinking. It was a revolution in a primal way.” America could have been on its way to moving past the lip service about integration that came before, ushered in by a pulsing beat.

Disco’s underground status was eventually thrust into the limelight, like it or not. Club DJs became celebrities and tastemakers, as important as radio airplay for generating hits. One big turning point: Donna Summer’s 1977 collaboration with Giorgio Moroder on “I Feel Love,” a relentlessly driving electronic programmed masterpiece, heralded the sound of the future. This record forced Rolling Stone to begrudgingly acknowledge the genre’s artistry, importance, and value. But as soon as the corporate system found it could make a buck, almost overnight, disco was everywhere. Hell, Ethel Merman ended up putting out a disco record. DJ Rick Dees and “his cast of idiots” assaulted us with a duck singing disco, one of many Billboard chart novelties.

As the 70s progressed, more and more rock stations began to switch to disco formats. And once disco achieved mainstream success, hitmakers began to look a lot less diverse. (Perhaps there's the answer to why we define the era by Saturday Night Fever.) But as quickly as disco was everywhere, the backlash had already been forming. For disco’s decline, the writing was on the wall—the outfield wall.

The “Disco Sucks” movement was a swift killer, reaching a fever pitch on July 12, 1979, when thousands of disco records were blown up during “Disco Demolition Night” at a White Sox game in Chicago’s Comiskey Park. Fans stormed the field, burning records and trashing the park, chanting “Disco sucks!” The instigator was a radio DJ who was just laid off as his station’s format changed from rock to disco.

“The culture allowed you to exist just fine as blacks and whites, but when they became the same, the powers-that-be found that very scary,” says Rodgers. Just like that, the pendulum swung back to rock and burgeoning synth pop. And disco—contrary to the headlines—didn’t die; it just went back underground. The next frontier for music, MTV, shunned black artists at its launch. Saying they “didn’t fit its rock format” and citing an obligation to cater to the “tastes of middle America,” these cues sounded a lot like the sentiments behind the Disco Sucks movement. Only until a worldwide juggernaut came along—Michael Jackson’s Thriller album (and specifically the smash single “Billie Jean”), coupled with the threat of CBS Records pulling its entire catalog—would MTV be forced to include people of color in its video rotation.

Despite its mainstream demise, disco was a joyful, freewheeling time that provides an insight into how music can open minds or wall them off; liberate or threaten; unite people or separate by identity. “Disco in its purest sense means that you will come out of a place having gone into euphoria, feeling that you have rejoiced,” writes Grace Jones.

In the years since disco’s ascendency, music would see countless trends grown from the roots of disco. Rap samples, synthwave, 90s house, EDM, and even a resurgence of DJ culture. But the euphoria Grace Jones talks about has never quite been replicated.

Maybe this is why I’m happy to hear today’s producers tap into the disco sound. Sure, the musical rainbow utopia never materialized. But we had a chance—a moment to get it right—and perhaps there will be another one as the history of American music marches on. Maybe its legacy is to tell the story of when we allow ourselves to fully feel a powerful groove, deep down it reaffirms that somehow despite all our differences, we will survive. Right now, we may need its relentlessly upbeat vibe more than ever.

Dig deeper into the music talked about in this piece

Listen to the tracks that crowdsourcing dubbed some of the best “lost” disco—found again, and added to the Pop Trash Playlist, Disco Obscuro. Then, explore a selection of newer, post-70s songs that reference the sounds of traditional disco production from years past in its sister playlist, Disco Nouveaux.

Eric Grigs is a pop culture writer, artist, and co-host of the Pop Trash Podcast.

The Tragic History of Disco Is Not What You Think It Is

Dig deeper into the music talked about in this piece