Eurodisco

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Eurodisco (also spelled as Euro disco or Euro-disco) is a music genre of electronic music that evolved from disco in the middle 1970s, [17] incorporating elements of europop and rock in a purely electronic and futuristic sound. [18] The genre emerged when European producers and musicians, especially Giorgio Moroder, Marc Cerrone and Frank Farian, adapted American disco music by incorporating European pop influences and recent new musical technologies, such as synthesizers and electronic drums.

Contents

Many Eurodisco compositions feature lyrics sung in English, although the singers often share a different mother tongue. In addition, the genre is considered to be one of the earliest forms of electronic dance music, [19] [20] as well as being credited as a precursor to later electronic music genres such as house, eurodance and techno.

History

Eurodisco is largely an offshoot of contemporary American music trends going far back to the early times of disco, pop and rock. During the 1960s, Europop hits spread around France, Italy and Germany, because of the French Scopitone (jukebox) and the Italian Cinebox/Coilorama Video-jukebox machines. Another root is the Eurovision Song Contest, especially in the 1970s.

The song "Waterloo" by Swedish pop group ABBA, which won the 1974 Eurovision song contest, is a typical example of a 1970s European pop song (Europop). [21] The success was huge and European producers instantly produced pop hits, and a whole new commercial music industry in Europe was met in the demand for social dancing music. The discofox dancing style was a result of this.

The American music journalist Robert Christgau used the term "Eurodisco" in his late 1970s articles for The Village Voice newspaper.

The term "disco" in Europe existed long before the Eurodisco and U.S. disco music scene. It was used in Europe during the 1960s as a short alternative to "discotheque". The first dance music venues called discotheques emerged in Occupied France in the 1940s. In the UK, "discotheques" and "discos" were called "clubs" like any other nightclub. In Italy and Spain, the term "discoteca" or "discotheque" means mainstream clubs. In Greece, "discotheque" describes the retro-clubs.

An example of the term "disco" with no relation to a specific music style (and dance music in general), is the Disco series that aired in Germany on the ZDF network from 1971 to 1982. This show proved that the term "disco" was widespread enough at the time, and that the second national TV network of Germany used it for a general music TV show in 1971. Another later example is the show Discoring on Italy's RAI channel (first aired in February 1977).

1970s

The term "Euro-disco" was first used during the mid-1970s to describe the non-UK based disco productions and artists such as D.D. Sound, West Germany groups Arabesque, [22] Boney M., [23] Dschinghis Khan and Silver Convention, the Munich-based production trio Giorgio Moroder, Donna Summer and Pete Bellotte, [24] the Italian singer Gino Soccio, [25] French artists Amanda Lear, Dalida, Cerrone, Hot Blood, Banzai (single "Viva America") and Ottawan, Dutch groups Luv' and Eurovision song contest winners Teach-In. In Spain, disco took off after the death of Francisco Franco in 1975, with Baccara. Swedish group ABBA gained the big hit "Dancing Queen".

1970s Eurodisco soon had spinoffs and variations. The most notable spinoff is space disco, a crossover of Eurodisco and US hi-NRG disco. Another popular variation, with no specific name, appeared in the late 1970s: a "Latin"-like sound added to the genre, which can be heard in Italy's Raffaella Carrà, La Bionda (D. D. Sound), Easy Going and France's Gibson Brothers.

1980s

One of the early representatives of the 1980s genre was the British group Imagination and with their series of hits throughout 1981 and 1982. In the United States, Donna Summer was the only 1980s Eurodisco singer, and the term hi-NRG was used there instead.

1980s Eurodisco variations soon appeared later in France, Germany, Spain and Greece. The French and German Eurodisco productions were the most popular. German pop duo Modern Talking was an icon of Eurodisco between 1985–1987 and became the most successful Eurodisco project ever. Bad Boys Blue was another very successful project.

That style became very popular in Eastern Europe and remained popular until the early 1990s. In Poland, disco polo, a local music genre relying heavily on Eurodisco was developed at the verge of the '80s and '90s. Some Canadian disco productions by groups like Lime became hits.

1990s

During the late 1980s, Eurodisco hits were produced in Spain and Greece and much later in Poland and Russia. Meanwhile, a sped-up version of Eurodisco with dance-pop elements became successful in the US, under the term "hi-NRG". Even today, for many Americans, "hi-NRG" means Paul Lekakis and the London Boys. Those hits (and a few others, like Londonbeat's "I've Been Thinking About You" from 1990) were the last hits called "Eurodisco" in Europe.

By the early 1990s, Eurodisco was influenced by the emergence of genres such as house, acid house and the electro (pop/dance/synth) music styles, and replaced (or evolved) by other music styles. Eurohouse and Italo-NRG are the most notable and connected directly with the Italo disco music scene. In the United States, especially for the Eurohouse style, they used the earlier term of "Eurodance" to describe this 1990s evolution of Eurodisco.

Technically speaking, the last form of Eurodisco is French house, a music style that appeared in France during the mid-1990s and slowly became widespread in Europe. French house is more of a "back to the roots" music style with 1970s Eurodisco influences far before the Italo disco explosion (more specifically space disco, hi-NRG disco, Canadian disco and P-funk).

2000s

By the mid to late 2000s, Eurodisco saw renewed interest. Artists such as Irene Cara, Berlin and the late Laura Branigan saw a surge in popularity, especially in places where it was not commercially successful after 1984, such as North America and South America.

Influence in the United States

The influence of Eurodisco had infiltrated dance and pop in the U.S. by 1983, as European producers and songwriters inspired a new generation of American performers. While disco had been declared "dead" due to a backlash there in 1979, subsequent Euro-disco flavored successes crossing the boundaries of rock, pop and dance, such as "Call Me" by Blondie and "Gloria" by Laura Branigan. [26]

Branigan (produced by German producer Jack White) moved deeper into the Eurodisco style for further hits, alongside Giorgio Moroder-produced U.S. acts Berlin and Irene Cara. By 1984, musicians from many countries had begun to produce Eurodisco songs. In Germany, notable practitioners of the sound included Modern Talking, Arabesque, Sandra, Fancy, Silent Circle, Mike Mareen, Lian Ross and C.C. Catch. Bands like Laban from Denmark; Magazine 60, Début de Soirée and Monte Kristo from France; Troll from Sweden; New Baccara from Spain; and Joy from Austria also helped, along with German artists, to consolidate the Eurodisco sound in the mid to late 80s.

See also

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References

  1. ↑ Horn, David; Shepherd, John (8 March 2012). Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World Volume 8. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   978-1-4411-4874-2 – via Google Books.
  2. ↑ Koskoff, Ellen (25 September 2017). The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9781351544146 – via Google Books.
  3. ↑ Turn the Beat Around: The Secret History of Disco. Macmillan + ORM. 23 June 2015. ISBN   978-1-4668-9412-9 . Retrieved May 31, 2024. The following year, the flip, "Baby Come Back," becomes a huge hit across Europe, setting in motion Europop and soon Eurodisco.
  4. ↑ Electronica, Dance and Club Music. Routledge. 5 July 2017. ISBN   978-1-351-56854-8 . Retrieved May 31, 2024. ... eurodisco emerged in the mid - 70s and revolved around a simplifica- tion of early disco's polyrhythmic percussion , which it reduced to a pound- ing bass beat ...
  5. ↑ Wodtke, Larissa (6 April 2023). Dance-Punk. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN   9781501381874 – via Google Books. ... instead of coming from Eurodisco strongholds in Germany, Italy, or France, the best imports right now are from England...
  6. ↑ Kuligowski, Waldemar; Poprawski, Marcin (27 November 2023). Festivals and Values Music, Community Engagement and Organisational Symbolism. Springer International Publishing. ISBN   9783031397523 – via Google Books. disco polo , a musical genre combining influences from Italian and German eurodisco and Belarusian , Ukrainian and Balkan folk melodies , with kitsch lyrics mainly about ( heterosexual ) love ( Socha 2020 ).
  7. ↑ Ellis, Iain (29 October 2008). Rebels Wit Attitude Subversive Rock Humorists. Soft Skull Press. ISBN   9781593763350 – via Google Books. ... Fischerspooner and Chilly Gonzales have also embraced the "electroclash" style-a camp mutation of Euro-disco and new wave-as the vehicle for their own campaigns of identity fluidity...
  8. ↑ Morley, David; Ang, Ien (3 August 2005). Cultural Studies. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9781134957927 – via Google Books. Eurorecords had to have immediate cross-national appeal, musical simplicity was of the essence- a bouncy beat, just one chorus hook, elementary lyrics. The fun of these records was entirely a matter of sound quality, but once a record was a hit it took on a kind of sleazy, nostalgic charm of its own. It was precisely the brazen utility of these records, in short, that gave them gay disco consumer appeal too.[...] Eurodisco also had an obvious element of camp -British club audiences took delight in the very gap between the grand gestures of Eurosingers and the vacuity of their songs.
  9. ↑ Bogdanov, Vladimir; Woodstra, Chris; Bush, John; Erlewine, Stephen Thomas (2001). All Music Guide to Electronica: The Definitive Guide to Electronic Music. Backbeat Books. ISBN   978-0-87930-628-1 . Retrieved May 31, 2024.{{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  10. ↑ Le Menestrel, Sara (2007). "The Color of Music: Social Boundaries and Stereotypes in Southwest Louisiana French Music". Southern Cultures. 13 (3): 87–105. ISSN   1068-8218. JSTOR   26391066.
  11. ↑ Hasselhoff, David; Thompson, Peter (15 May 2007). Don't Hassel the Hoff The Autobiography. St. Martin's Press. ISBN   9781429901062 – via Google Books. Simon invited me to work with Stock, Aitken and Waterman, Britain's biggest hit-makers of the 1980s whose work favoured a high-spirited blend of pop music and Hi-NRG, a high-tech version of Euro-disco. I checked into the Piccadilly Hotel
  12. ↑ Schütte, Uwe (11 January 2017). German Pop Music A Companion. De Gruyter. ISBN   9783110423549 – via Google Books. Like Frankfurt, Munich also had a (more indirect) house and techno pre-history via the Eurodisco sound associated with Giorgio Moroder.
  13. ↑ Decentring Dancing Texts The Challenge of Interpreting Dances. Palgrave Macmillan UK. 24 July 2008. ISBN   9780230584426 – via Google Books.
  14. ↑ Borthwick, Stuart; Moy, Ron (15 April 2020). Popular Music Genres: an Introduction. Routledge. ISBN   978-0-7486-1745-6 – via Google Books.
  15. ↑ "How Synthwave Grew from a Niche '80s Throwback to a Current Phenomenon". Popmatters. 25 November 2019. Retrieved May 31, 2024.
  16. ↑ Schütte, Uwe (11 January 2017). German Pop Music A Companion. De Gruyter. ISBN   9783110423549 – via Google Books. Like Frankfurt, Munich also had a (more indirect) house and techno pre-history via the Eurodisco sound associated with Giorgio Moroder.
  17. ↑ Evans, Mike (4 October 2018). 30-Second Rock Music - The 50 Key Styles, Artists and Happenings Each Explained in Half a Minute. Ivy Press. ISBN   9781782405542 – via Google Books. 'Euro Disco', an electronic music style popularized by producers like Giorgio Moroder.
  18. ↑ Ellen Koskoff, Ellen (25 September 2017). The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music The United States and Canada · Volume 3. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9781351544146 – via Google Books. Rhythm and blues disco was joined by Eurodisco, a style from the continent that relied largely on synthesized instrumentation and effects. Lacking the footing in the rhythm and blues idioms that carried American disco, Eurodisco sounded more purely electronic, often more futuristic. Some tunes
  19. ↑ Reynolds, Simon (24 May 2011). Bring the Noise 20 Years of Writing About Hip Rock and Hip Hop. Soft Skull Press. ISBN   9781593764609 – via Google Books. The 'funkless' accusation is pretty incontestable. It goes back to Giorgio Moroder, whose productions for Donna Summer pioneered the first all-electronic dance music: Eurodisco.
  20. ↑ Christopher, David (1999). British Culture An Introduction. Routledge. ISBN   9780415220538 – via Google Books. Around 1977 the German producer Giorgio Moroder popularised an infectious, rhythmical, electronic dance music (later known as 'Euro disco') through the music of the American vocalist Donna Summer.
  21. ↑ "ABBA's Waterloo named best song in Eurovision Top 50". Brussels Times. Retrieved 10 September 2021.
  22. ↑ "Arabesque - Biography, Albums, Streaming Links". AllMusic . Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  23. ↑ "Whatever happened to Boney M?". BBC. 29 January 2002. Retrieved 11 September 2021.
  24. ↑ Krettenauer, Thomas (2017). "Hit Men: Giorgio Moroder, Frank Farian and the eurodisco sound of the 1970s/80s". In Ahlers, Michael; Jacke, Christoph (eds.). Perspectives on German Popular Music. London: Routledge. ISBN   978-1-4724-7962-4.
  25. ↑ "Gino Soccio | Biography, Albums, Streaming Links". AllMusic. Retrieved 7 January 2021.
  26. ↑ David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of LGBT Music. 2017. Retrieved 29 August 2023. The influence of Eurodisco was soon felt in America, where Moroder provided Blondie with their biggest US chart hit ('Call Me'), and Laura Brannigan would also hit Number One with a cover of the Italian pop hit 'Gloria'.
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