The Decline of Disco

In the late 1970s, with the worldwide spread of disco, the first crusades against it also began: disco music started its decline.

Disco was too far removed from everything that critics had praised until that point. Its lack of social commitment, its studied artificiality—contrasting with the spontaneity of blues and rock—and its absolute lack of cultural premises made it too different. Even the drugs were different: from marijuana, LSD, and heroin used ‘to think,’ to coke, Quaaludes, and Poppers used ‘to act.’ In 1978, various clubs where rock music was played (Hurrah’s, the Mudd…) opened in New York. At the end of 1979, many record labels saw their profits halved and faced a major sales crisis. Disco fell victim to severe “abuse“; it was overexposed and commercialized: it was everywhere, omnipresent, and almost “unbearable.”

THE CRUSADES AGAINST DISCO MUSIC

In 1979, disco music “died in a week.” America, a country bombarded by myths of masculinity and success, reserved a special place for professional sports, especially baseball which, after the Watergate scandal, social tensions, and the Vietnam War, remained the only thing left to believe in. Disco, with its problematic relationship with masculinity, always had an ambiguous relationship with baseball in popular culture. Thus, in the mid-70s, a series of campaigns aimed at the destruction of disco began.

In July 1979, Michael Veeck, promoter for the White Sox, staged a “Disco Demolition Derby” during the break between games to increase fan attendance: any fan who showed up with a disco vinyl record to be demolished would pay only 98 cents for their ticket. DJ Steve Dahl was Veeck’s accomplice, promoting the initiative on the radio station where he worked, WLUP. Consequently, the “Disco Demolition Derby” gained massive resonance: the game was a sell-out, with an audience of 50,000 people. Dahl’s anti-disco campaign was not an isolated case. DREAD (Detroit Rockers Engaged in the Abolition of Disco) was an organization supported by the rock radio station WRIF, offering its members discounts on shows or music store purchases in exchange for an anti-disco oath. In January 1979, WPIX, a New York radio station, introduced a new “rock only” format aimed at boycotting disco. Operations against the disco universe spread like wildfire: to Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Oklahoma, and as far as England, Turkey, and every part of the world. The eclipse of disco followed the boycott campaigns led by Dahl and Reagan, but there was more to it.

1979: DISCO MUSIC DIES IN THE USA AND FLOURISHES IN EUROPE

Peter Shapiro: “Like all subcultures and artistic movements, disco had sown the seeds of its own destruction. […] Disco contained within itself the germ of the next generation, which sprouted from its very core. The clearest sign was the behavior of the VIPs, who abandoned disco as soon as the cultural shift appeared on the horizon. At the dawn of the 1980s, the priority was returning to ‘American values’: no more extravagances and European social assistance programs, just pure and simple home-grown truths, hard work, and John Wayne on his white horse. […] Disco as a musical genre (rather than a state of mind) began to decline rapidly in the United States starting from the end of ’79; the only clubs in New York to stay afloat were those that encouraged originality and experimentation. […] While disco was being tarred and feathered, seized, and torn apart in the United States, it never truly died in Europe. It was never dragged through the mud; its name was never even spoken in vain. On the contrary, disco became part of, if not the foundation for, the continent’s pop infrastructure. Whatever the reason, the importance of disco in Europe was perhaps even greater after its death in America in 1979. In part, this was due to the legislation in many European countries that imposed a certain quota of national music on radio broadcasters. But it is also undeniable that, protectionism or not, disco flourished in the hands of European producers in the 1980s, and most notably in Italy.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1CP1751wJA