A miracle rebirth.
**This is a public speaking speech that I have appropriated into article form
"Disco Revival"
I was never a fan of musical fantasy, where authenticity comes secondary to fraudulent worlds of imagination. When it concerns the purpose of music, I was far more interested in social commentary and the grittiness of everyday life, not flowers and fairies; those were topics best reserved for the immature, not erudites such as myself. That is, until the pandemic popped my insouciant bubble and introduced me to reality, and I no longer wanted anything to do with it.
The concept of escapism in music has permeated subculture for decades, but has always been written off as shallow by the masses. The only time in recent history escapism has ever gone mainstream would be the 1970s - in the midst of the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement. While the minds of ordinary Americans were occupied with systemic oppression and foreign conflict, escapism presented itself as an alluring alternative masked as club culture. Partying; four-to-the-floor beats; drugs; it’s the perfect combination of pleasure and pill-induced apathy to unplug people from the horrors that awaited them come morning.
At the axis of this upheaval was the disco genre: a previously fringe counterculture movement that emerged in queer and African-American communities as a courier of sexual liberation and identity reform. It wasn't until the prestigious record label Motown - who are accredited with the racial integration of mainstream music - began to embrace disco’s soundscape that the genre achieved worldwide success through artists such as Diana Ross and Norman Whitfield. Escapism was integral to disco’s identity, as lyrics rarely had substance - but that's what listeners appreciated, and its danceable qualities made it an ideal match for clubbing.
However, just as disco was on the eve of cementing its legacy as perennial, it faced a catastrophic reckoning in 1979’s Disco Demolition Night, where thousands of disco records were blown up in an act of defiance from traditionalist punk-rockers midway through a doubleheader MLB game. While Disco Demolition Night may not have directly ended disco’s reign, it was certainly an augury of disco’s moribund character during the late 70s and early 80s, when disco was consumed in a wave of conservative rhetoric following Reagan’s inauguration.
Shifting to the present day, a new revolution has begun. When the Covid-19 pandemic shocked the globe with its enduring lockdowns, it infected more than just people, inundating every art medium with its ghoulish presence; and for the first time in three decades, disco made a startling return to a widespread audience. Established artists such as Beyonce and Miley Cyrus have adopted disco’s foundations to chart-topping profit, and new artists such as Roisin Murphy and Jessie Ware have been elevated to pop-star status with albums that 5 years ago would have been characterized as passé. At face value, the zeitgeist of the 21st century seems disparate to the cultural turmoil of the 1970s: Why have a disco revival now?
I believe that Dua Lipa said it the best with the title of her 2020 sophomore release, “Future Nostalgia”, which harks back to the Kylie Minogue era of the 1980s. By characterizing her album as a paradox, Dua Lipa comments on the evolving nature of escapism in a new decade of romanticized pastiches. While in the 1970s, escapism meant destigmatizing sexuality alongside adrenaline-pumping basslines, in the 2020s it means sentimentality and vintage ambiance… all through the same genre of disco. In the bleak future of the pandemic, people are looking backwards for answers. It’s an embodiment of the idiom ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’, glorifying the olden days as simplistic and carefree compared to modern complexities: which is completely unfounded. Many of the listeners that idealize the late 20th century haven’t even lived through it: a psychology term coined as ‘vicarious nostalgia’.
Part of our newfound fascination with the past stems from the internet. Never before have we had access to so many new and old ideas at the same time. There’s a reason we’re not homesick for the 1800s: we don’t have any videos of the time period to lust over. During the pandemic, we were the most online and claustrophobic we’ve ever been, and the perceived freedom of the 1970s-1980s was tempting. Suddenly, the partying and dancing of disco-swamped clubs became our desire, and artists have met that demand by retrofitting disco into their musical styles.
Finally, Disco’s frankenstein-resurrection can be explained through the cyclical nature of trends. A commonly cited hypothesis in fashion is Laver’s Law, which can easily be applied to music. According to Laver, it takes approximately 50 years for a trend to become in vogue again. Disco isn’t the only genre experiencing revitalization: 1960s funk returned in the 2010s with Bruno Mars and 1980s post-punk is beginning to take root in indie communities again. It’s likely that as humanity moves forward, forgetting the desolation of the pandemic, the disco bandwagon may fall off the tracks and perish once again. But - as Dua Lipa aptly implies - it will return in time, no doubt in circumstances very different than that of today. Disco may be ageless; the world is not.
Thank you for reading!!