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“The Untold History of Disco” Polyphonic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_c2dCO5WLo&t=103s&ab_channel=Polyphonic
Intro song (More Than a Woman cover arrangement – Orsay Music):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoXSptTDk7o&ab_channel=orsaymusic
Thumbnail by Hannah Raine:
https://www.instagram.com/hannahmraine/?hl=en
SOURCES
Nick Cohn, “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night” New York Mag (1976).
Richard Dyer, “In Defence of Disco” Gay Left, no.8 (1979).
Alice Echols, Hot Stuff: Disco and the Remaking of American Culture, W.W. Norton (2010).
Nadine Hubbs, “’I Will Survive’: Musical Mappings of Queer Social Space in a Disco Anthem” Popular Music Vol. 26, No. 2 (May, 2007).
Margherita Heyer-Caput, “Italian-American Urban Hyphens in Saturday Night Fever” Italian Americana Vol. 29, No. 1 (Winter 2011).
Tavia Nyong’o, “I Feel Love: Disco and its Discontents” Criticism Vol. 50, No. 1, Special Issue: Disco (Winter 2008).
Lisa Robinson, “Boogie Nights” Vanity Fair (2010).
John Rockwell, “POP VIEW; Rock vs. Disco: Who Really Won the War?” The New York Times (1990).
Ioana Stamatescu, “Le freak, c’est chic! Disco Culture and Whit Stillman’s The Last Days of Disco” Synergy, vol. 13, no. 1 (2017).
Joshua Williams, “The Death of Disco Did Not Take Place: Disco Demolition Night and The Rhetorical Destruction of Disco” The Macksey Journal, Vol. 2. (2021).
Paul Williams, “too black, too gay: the disco inferno” Duke University Press (2003).
source
"Disco is NOT Dead! Disco is ALIVE!" – Eddie Izzard, Mystery Men
Algorithm
Everything in the glass of Woke culture ruins even the past… 😒🤦🏻♂️
You can over-analyse. Disco died because it had followed a common trajectory from cool to mainstream to old hat. The musical landscape was rapidly evolving from the late 50s into the 90s and young people wanted their own thing all the time, so within a few years a cool thing would become ancient; by 1980 for instance the coolest rock bands of the early-mid 70s were being called dinosaurs. The mainstream is the death of cool. I was 14 in 1980 and by then disco was on TV variety shows and it was stuff old folks in their 20s danced to. We had our Punk and New Wave and laughed at the naff disco generation.
I might watch this film. Another excellent vid by Broey 🍸
I’m glad the point of the EDM scene stemming from Disco, almost all of the clips remind me of the shows/festivals that I go to. Great video
saturday night fever is kind of like rocky horror picture show. it’s a classic, i love it, don’t you DARE ask me what the plot is
amazing
Love this topic. I'm one of the people who has never seen Saturday Night Fever and I don't think I will. Certainly not what I expect from the view brief scenes I know.
The BeeGees were Australian
… so we burned dark credits out of it but kept "the thing" by making it our own and this is a good thing, because it is good for everyone? Fun times.
Makes you want to go colonial again, it will probably be better for everyone once we hundred years later again notice that we were naughty and apologise. I mean, it will be better for everyone.
i'm brazilian and i find my experience in clubs very insteresting. as a woman, i never felt comfortable and safe at what i call "straight parties", because the gender performance was so strict and i was harassed all the time, i just couldn't let loose and have fun. is like guys were not able to do it, so they wouldn't let women do it lol. so i always hung out at lgbt parties, i always felt more safe, accepted and the songs were much better. but when i started clubbing, i noticed that some of the straight guys my age were going to lgbt clubs to get the "good girls" (whatever that means), so they had to coexist with lgbt people and even get harassed by them – i also noticed that those guys were more open to be lgbt friendly and also experiment with their sexuality as well. so maybe things are getting better?
Amazing video, watched it yesterday and keep catching myself replaying ideas from it and daydreaming about disco. Never seen the movie but a huge fan of disco. Fascinating history!
Love this collaboration! At the start I was wondering if they'd mention Polyphonic, and what I got was more than I expected, excellent
I remeber being at a bar in a touristy European city that didnt see a lot of Americans. The bartender told me that it used to be so hard for them to pick a good playlist "we get people from all over and all ages so now we just play disco because everybody loves disco". He said it so matter of factly too. It hit me then: Americans hate disco because they lack the capacity…it's all the coca cola and protestantism…makes them terrible dancers.
The pushback on Disco's rise to prominence was white supremacy. Disco was Black and gay and something like 'disco sucks' was a book burning performed by proto-Nazis. Intelexual Media looks at this lynching of the artform and culture in her videos on the 1970s. Disco was later reconstituted as Chicago House and then more specifically Techno, but its forward-thinking Black, countercultural and soulful approach to music infused with P-Funk and Afrofuturism was soon bleached out by the rise of more accessible technology, meaning increasingly no-talent producers were able to put out singles from 1995 onwards and create what we know as House today – a diluted and commodified product stripped of its vital signifiers and empty of any passion or context. Like with the commodification of Disco, this is what happens when Capitalism, which is by nature heteronormative and white supremacist – those being the dominant states – grabs ahold of a countercultural product, and realises it can decouple the aesthetics from the foundational backbone.
Well – I thought that I didn't want to learn about disco. I'm happy to have been very wrong.
It would be great to see how you feel about the sequel Staying Alive. Not very disco at all but still a great film with interesting themes.
Lovely stuff Brovember
IM LITERALLY HAVING A DISCO TONIGHT IN AN ABANDONED HOUSE! DISCO NEVER DIED!! DANCE YOUR HEARTS OUT!!! love you
The story I'd heard was that when John Travolta got the role, the studio offered to soften the character for him, so as not to hurt his image, and Travolta declined. So they probably didn't use the term "toxic masculinity" at the time, but they were nonetheless aware of what kind of character they were portraying.
Your argument reminds me of Freaks and Geeks! Those dudes just wanted to be alt since their existence is anything but.
Let’s say it’s in a coma
This video does disco justice!!
The Sailor Moon soundtrack is basically just magic disco and it works
Fantastic video. I was 13 when Saturday Night Fever came out, and my mom took us to see it (though she was upset with the violence of it) I loved disco dancing and recall practicing The Hustle and The Bump in the girls locker room with other kids.
There was definitely a factor of the rock kids coming down hard on disco, but there was also a factor of the popular kids (who weren’t the dedicated hard rock kids, they were considered “burnouts”) turning disco into their own power play (who had the most expensive gold jewelry or Quiana shirt).
It became over-saturated and commercial, with one disco radio station in San Francisco airing an especially cringey ad featuring wacky grandparents gyrating on the dance floor. At some point the average person “moved on”.
Thankfully there has been a strong movement to reclaim what disco signified to begin with.
Polyphonic, also known as the first page of Google results and a Wikipedia entry. That guy doesn't know or say anything you couldn't learn in fifteen minutes by yourself. Otherwise superb video. To nitpick, The Bee Gees were Australian.
Fantastic video! Congrats!
Manhattan Skyline is my favorite track from Saturday Night Fever. It has the lush strings and driving beat Polyphonic mentioned. I was 16 when the movie came out. My parents took me to see the PG cut of it which was still icky on so many levels.
I grew up with Funk which I still like better than disco and I still like disco alot.
!!!!!!!!! great video 🙂
wasn't a plot driven film,was a character study-never pretended to be anything else
Great video! Thank youuu
Disco Stu, walking into the sunset.
The brothers were born in the UK but the Bee Gee’s hail from Australia
The n word in Saturday Night Fever really shocked me. As much as the movie is hailed I'd never seen it mentioned, a warning or even a discussion of the rhyme. It feels like I have to brace myself to consume past media due to the prevalence of racism in many scripts and stories.
its seems an error to completly dissassociate the idea of looking good from masculinity.
Very interesting and thoughtful documentary.
I was born in the late 60s and so the 70s was very much part of my early childhood and resonated with me a lot. I never really found the Bee Gees etc sterile as such (You Should Be Dancing is incredible record with a lot of uniqueness) although there were a lot of terrible disco records around in that era. When I was in my early 20s I discovered Salsoul LPs which were an important element of early disco and that was very much a mixed bag, also a lot of discofied jazz funk… like you alluded to I think a big part of the early disco movement was not the music itself but the event and what DJs did with the material.
I'm intrigued that I've not really come across a satisfactory answer to what was the first disco record…
Hands down, this is one of the best docs about "SNF" (and the disco movement) that I've watched on YT. Another great "character study" film to see (obliviously influenced by "SNF") is called "Tony Manero". It's set in war torn South America in the late 70's and focuses on a middle aged sociopathic male who's obsessed with the "SNF" film. There's a televised dance contest that he wants to enter and it shows the brutal path he takes to get there. Thank you for posting your fantastic video.
I can't begin to to tell you how grateful and appreciative I am of this close reading from you. Happy New Year!