Disco emerged in the early 1970s as the most important form of dance music in Euro-American markets—seen as affixed to a hedonistic, escapist and drug-drenched lifestyle—reaching its apex in New York’s Studio 54. As a genre, the music featured syncopated rhythms placed forefront in the mix, with the use of many studio synthesizer effects from strings to percussion, as well as anonymous studio musicians. The tempo of disco songs was fast; the singers, mostly female and African American, decried their sufferings while insisting upon fortitude and resolve as in the disco anthem recorded by Gloria Gaynor “I Will Survive” (1977). Disco, by nature of the music and its outlets, furthered the careers both of singers and of record producers. Other disco stars include Donna Summer, Evelyn “Champagne” King, Cheryl Lynn, Grace Jones and the openly gay Sylvester (in fact, the Village People, another disco act that both mimicked and lampooned gay stereotyping, were not openly gay).

Although disco music was influenced by a pop predecessor, glam rock and its emphasis on the fantastic and theatrical, disco was often seen as opposite to heavy metal and album-oriented and arena rock that was also popular by the late 1970s and well instituted on the FM dial. In fact, by 1977, before punk spread, there was a “disco sucks” movement sponsored by radio stations that attracted suburban white youth, who insisted that disco was escapist, synthetic and overproduced. The music was biased in favor of the producer—as producers like Jacques Morali and Giorgio Moroder also became stars—but disco music attracted an urban audience of gays, blacks, Hispanics and Italian Americans clad in sparkles and prints who sang along with Alicia Bridges when she sang “I Love the Nightlife” (1979). It also fascinated film-makers again in the late 1990s.