There are numerous iconic works in 80s pop music, including rock, synth-pop, and new wave classics.
However, personally, I have a stronger preference for disco music from continental Europe.
As an Asian, our country embraced European disco/Italo disco music more in the 80s, which was our earliest exposure to Western pop music.
However, I’ve noticed that in YouTube compilations of 80s pop music, there’s a lack of European disco music, and even if they are included, it’s apparent that these videos were not made by Americans.
Does it mean that Americans dislike disco music?
Is it because of the ‘Disco Demolition Night’ in 1979 that Americans stopped listening to disco?
It seems that Americans prefer rock and jazz music instead
23 comments
ABBA is huge here, I guess they were more 70s? I haven’t googled it.
Idk, I fucking love ABBA and the bee gees.
Disco got a pretty bad rap culturally. It was kind of viewed as crappy (and a lot of it was). Just cultural differences I guess.
It probably makes more sense when you consider we had disco for 7 to 10 years before it made it to Europe
America is a very big and diverse country full of a lot of cultures. Americans love music and in the 80’s they liked disco a lot. Check out Miami’s disco scene during the 80’s for a case study on how an American community embraced disco
Disco is American so how can we not like something we created? It probably just went out with the times while Europeans and maybe Asians kept to it for a longer period of time. Back then Europeans would get music late anyways so I’m not surprised they had it long after we moved on to something else. And it could be they just genuinely liked disco more at the time.
We always love jazz and rock no matter what time period it is lol
Well it was not a country bias thing that’s for sure. As the ’70s ended and country music and run its course as has soft rock/POP had fully matured and disco had played out (tons of disco movies second half of ’70s – zero first half of 80’s) the new sound i.e. Huey Lewis, Frankie goes to Hollywood, etc. was so different everyone – here anyway – couldn’t get enough of it.
Also, the popular movies of the time (Breakfast Club, 16 Candles, etc.) and the rise of MTV cemented the genre.
To be fair though there were a lot of English and Australian acts that did very well also.
Just my .02
Could you give examples of artists you don’t think were popular? Because European dance pop was everywhere in the 80s, we just didn’t call it disco.
Disco had become a dirty word in the late 70s. A lot of hard rock bands had started recording music that sounded more like disco, which sparked a backlash that was largely responsible for the punk movement catching steam in the US.
Disco started in America and went through its wave of popularity. By the early 1980s it was being replaced with rock and synth pop. And to be fair, 80s music was pretty good.
And at the end of the 80s, those were replaced in popularity by grunge and rap.
Because it doesn’t sound that good tbh
We had American disco music, which we liked better.
Because we were already on to the next phase. Disco was popular in the 70s.
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Because by the 80’s disco was very passé in the US.
Because those groups didn’t make good music videos, and Americans were already tired of disco music by the 80s anyway.
I lived through the Disco War.
Disco was heavily over-played and pretty much sounded very repetitive from one song to the next. People wanted lyrics and some originality. There was a sense that record companies were forcing the genre on the public and not promoting other types of music. The record companies were complaining that people were recording songs off the radio, so their profits were falling. In reality, record companies were promoting a song style that people were tired of listening to.
Eventually, people started protesting against disco music and demanding more variety. This lead to New Wave, Punk, and Rap finally gaining traction.
Disco kinda got into a near death accident and then came “back” as house a week after. Or maybe better put the vestiges of Disco’s spirit and mechanics went into House. Was sorta underground for a while so it didn’t make the pop compilations you might see curated on YouTube.
Disco just ran its course and people were over it by the 1980s. By the late 1970s, it was just everywhere and even rock bands were making disco tracks and there was just backlash against it. Music just comes and goes in phases, and disco’s phase had ended.
You saw the same thing happen in the 1990s: people got tired of over commercialized big hair rock and synth pop, and more acoustic-sounding and grungy bands exploded in popularity.
Because it sucked
Because it sucks.
Because by the 1980s disco had already “died” as a genre and different musical genres were the popular subculture. Our disco fad was a decade earlier. The 80s were when heavy metal took off.
Michael Jackson
Because Europe is behind in culture. No offense, but the US is far above whatever the rest of the world has, culturally.
Disco died here in the 70s. From what I can tell, it survived longer in Europe in a British form and an Italian form. The Italian form moved to Japan where it became eurobeat, which I love, but it’s practically unheard of here outside of DDR-style arcade games and Initial D.
Euro/Italo Disco isn’t unheard of here though. 80s bands like Dead Or Alive and Bananarama had some success here iirc, and they were of that Brit-disco style.