https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-history-of-italo-disco/
Article featured in Far Out magazine "The History of Italo Disco"
Over the last thirty years, Italo disco has gone from being a tasteless novelty item and guilty pleasure to a snobbish cult presided over by the techno elite. Here, we turn the lights on at the disco in an effort to find out exactly what Italo is and why it still matters. While the tension between nonsense lyrical translations and fierce synth-led melodies is an acquired taste, the thrill of Italo is that it does not take itself too seriously. It celebrates the synthetic in a way that, from a 21st Century perspective, seems joyously ahead of its time. It is little wonder Italo now finds itself at the cutting edge of the Berlin club scene and EDM mainstream. It is not difficult to work out why Italo disco failed to make an impact in English speaking territories — awkward translations and the absence of quality music videos was obviously problematic in a market dominated by American MTV. Likewise, the proliferation of synth-pop in the early 1980s meant that by the time Italo got a real foothold in the scene, it already sounded a bit dated to British and US audiences familiar with Duran Duran, Eurythmics and Depeche Mode. Live Aid was also a big game-changer, from 1985 onwards, the move towards band sounds, live instrumentation and stadium rock influenced the adult-orientated flavour of pop radio.
Italo’s success in Northern European countries like Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, however, left a legacy that has spawned numerous revivals. The narrative attached to the genre has moved away from the ironic consumption of Club Med-style Euro-pop, to a more serious appreciation of its innovative production, and its undoubted role in the development of house music and techno. In this direction, Italo is seen as the missing link between Kraftwerk and Giorgio Moroder in the 1970s and Frankie Knuckles and Bobby Orlando in the 1980s.
An oversimplification? Perhaps. And what this story avoids is an appreciation of Italo in the terms of its own definition. Unfortunately, the Italo canon is incredibly difficult to understand, it’s a myriad of producers, vocalist and artists, with a convoluted and contradictory back catalogue of hits, misses and cover versions. So here goes, with an inevitably flawed attempt to explain the inexplicable; the authentic joy of Italo disco...
Read full version at Far Out Magazine.
Comments