History Analysis / DiscoSucks

Even among disco's base of hip urban audiences, listeners seemed to be tired of the music, with many clubs starting to spin NewWaveMusic instead as FM radio stuck to hard rock before Creator/{{MTV}} came along. This cross-pollination between new wave as it started to transition to AlternativeRock and dance music would culminate in the AlternativeDance movement mentioned below.

A number of factors also added conservative culture war politics and rank bigotry into the mix. Disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of Black and female musicians and large presence of nonwhite and female disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Furthermore, it was associated with cities like [[TheBigRottenApple New York]] and Philadelphia in a time when America's major metropolises were increasingly seen as {{Vice Cit|y}}ies and hotbeds of a kind of labor/welfare-focused liberal politics that had fallen into disrepute by that point, with even the liberal President UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter backing away from the postwar "New Deal consensus" in favor of a "neoliberal" deregulatory program that his successors UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/BillClinton would more fully embrace. Social conservatives, including the ascendant [[MoralGuardians Christian Right]] of the era, decried the sexually charged atmosphere of the music and the nightclub scene, as well as the popularity of recreational drugs among fans, traits that they also criticized rock music for.

In short, by 1979 disco had a public image comparable to HairMetal in 1991, {{Boy Band}}s in 2002, or PostGrunge in 2012. Among the critics, nobody who wanted to be taken seriously treated it as much more than vapid, disposable pop, a type of music whose few good early hits were drowned out by [[SturgeonsLaw the volume of garbage that followed]], while among mainstream listeners, it was associated with a snobbish, decadent big-city lifestyle that they wanted no part of. Many radio stations promised "[[Music/TheBeeGees Bee Gee]]-free weekends", and a novelty country song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqSBQFJRKq8 "Disco Sucks"]] became a crossover hit on the pop charts.

Attacked on two sides and with a powerful image against it, disco was fading fast and completely dead by early 1981, and with it went the fashions and styles related to or heavily associated with it (such as flared trousers). For the rest of TheEighties, admitting that you liked disco may as well have been, at worst, admitting to cannibalism, or at best, admitting that you were ''incredibly'' out of touch.[[note]]A joke from ''Film/{{Ghostbusters}}'', which would have been funny to audiences in 1984 but is lost on modern audiences, is Louis playing "Disco Inferno" at his party, put in by the filmmakers to help show how much of a dork he is. ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' also used to make the same joke about Jon Arbuckle.[[/note]] While dance artists like Music/{{Madonna}} and Music/JanetJackson continued to take influence from it (not to mention the influence it had on early HipHop), whatever remaining fandom the genre itself still had was restricted to gay clubs, which marginalized it even further.

Disco would start to reemerge (or at least, come to the surface for fresh air) during TheNineties' [[PopularityPolynomial wave of nostalgia for the '70s and its backlash against all things '80s]], mainly in the form of {{sampling}} for [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiKOif0UKRM rap and]] [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSV0D_Id8Ho&feature dance songs.]] (It didn't hurt that most popular dance music, particularly {{house|Music}} and its offshoots, can trace its lineage straight back to disco.) Still, during this same time, ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' had a character named [[DiscoDan Disco Stu]] who was used almost purely for comic relief, showing that the genre was still far away from returning to public acceptance. Hatred of disco as a symbol of everything wrong with TheSeventies is so legendary that the CondemnedByHistory trope was [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes once called]] "Deader Than Disco".

On July 12, 1979, the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} [[UsefulNotes/MLBTeams White Sox]] (whose South Side base meant that their fans were Black and white in about equal measure) hosted a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Disco Demolition Night"]] promotion (see picture on main page, see Wiki/TheOtherWiki for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night more information]]), the brainchild of a White Sox executive and Steve Dahl, a DJ who had been fired from the rock station WDAI on Christmas Eve, 1978 as part of its switch to a disco format. After being snapped up by the rival rock station WLUP, Dahl reinvented himself a ShockJock who turned WLUP into a bully pulpit "dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as disco", where he regularly mocked his old station as "Disco D.I.E.", recorded a disco-bashing [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLFMELubizU parody]] of Music/RodStewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", and rallied his fans into a mock "anti-disco army" called the Insane Coho Lips. Fans could bring in their disco records in exchange for less than a dollar admission; since the game was a doubleheader[[note]]Incidentally, against the UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} Tigers, probably the closest thing the White Sox have to a rival within the American League. The Sox, of course, have a FandomRivalry with the Cubs, but until interleague play was instituted in 1997, they had only played each other in six official games--all part of the 1906 World Series.[[/note]], the plan was that the records would get blown up in the middle of the field between the games, and the stands at Comiskey would be extra-full because everyone and their uncle would pay to see those stupid disco records get what they deserved.

Today, however, it seems as though the former TropeNamer for CondemnedByHistory is itself becoming [[PopularityPolynomial a subversion of its own trope]]. Younger generations have grown up with no memory of disco or their parents' hatred of it; to them, it's simply a style of music that they will like or dislike on its own merits. The Sirius XM disco station probably introduced more than a few new fans, as seen by the surprisingly large reaction to its removal, which forced it to be {{Uncanceled}}. Similarly, the advent of the internet allowed some people to discover disco for the first time after terrestrial radio stations stopped playing it. Many of the negative connotations associated with it have died out, and many of its enemies have toned down the vitriol and forgotten about it. This can be seen on the pop charts; in 2013 alone, a number of "disco revival" songs by artists as diverse as Music/BrunoMars, Creator/RobinThicke, and Music/DaftPunk have been Top 40 hits, while 2020 saw artists like Music/DuaLipa and Jessie Ware release heavily disco-inspired albums to critical acclaim. [[{{Irony}} So the anti-disco backlash is, itself, deader than disco]].

For a time in the late '70s, the music genre of {{disco}} was the biggest thing ever. It had its roots in the ethnic and gay club scenes of UsefulNotes/NewYorkCity and UsefulNotes/{{Philadelphia}} in the late '60s and early '70s, and started cracking the mainstream around 1974-75 with songs like Van [=McCoy=]'s "The Hustle", The Hues Corporation's "Rock the Boat", and Carl Douglas' "Kung Fu Fighting" as some of its first big hits. [[Creator/{{Motown}} Motown Records]] fell in love with the new sound and reinvented itself around it as its '60s "Motown sound" fell out of favor. It quickly spread to the UK (through that country's Northern soul scene) and Western Europe, where it inspired a contemporaneous scene that continued to flourish into TheEighties. It wasn't until 1977, however, when disco truly ''exploded'', bursting into the popular consciousness with the blockbuster success of ''Film/SaturdayNightFever'' and its soundtrack. Clubs like New York's Studio 54 became ''the'' places to be and be seen. Every medium-sized American city had at least one disco radio station and club. It was during this time when, in the memory of pop culture, disco became the sound that defined TheSeventies.

Then, even before TheEighties officially started, a vociferous backlash emerged in the US from both white and Black music listeners. Whites gravitated towards various forms of rock, specifically {{punk|Rock}}, {{new wave|Music}}, and assorted types of {{hard rock}} and [[HeavyMetal metal]] (including HairMetal, which itself became the Disco of the '80s), and rejected the genre's hip, urban image. Meanwhile, the Black leaders of {{funk}} actively led a campaign to "rescue dance music from the blahs" as Music/GeorgeClinton put it, rejecting disco's fusion of "their" music style with mainstream pop. The UsefulNotes/{{punk}}s castigated disco for its political apathy, seeing it as music for mindless hedonists and comparing it to [[UsefulNotes/WeimarGermany Weimar-era]] cabaret music that was [[BreadAndCircuses lulling people into a false sense of security]] in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. (Several of them would, however, later admit in Creator/VH1's ''[[ILoveTheExties I Love the '70s]]'' that they thought the soundtrack to ''Film/SaturdayNightFever'' was brilliant.) Additionally, working-class music listeners in an era of economic malaise rapidly grew resentful of what they perceived to be a culture of elitism and ConspicuousConsumption in the disco scene, given the large amount of money needed to afford the flashy outfits and dance lessons that were necessary to survive on the dance floor.[[note]]A similar story played out with ProgressiveRock around the same time, never a critical darling to begin with, which fell into decline by the late '70s as listeners came to see it as the domain of [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie]] [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids idealists]] and [[InsufferableGenius pretentious, nerdy intellectuals]]. Its [[GenreBusting creative boundary-pushing]], need for expensive instruments and lessons to play them proficiently, and the genre's tendency toward audiophilia leading to a perception that listeners needed expensive stereo equipment for the music to be heard properly were all seen as having pulled rock away from its roots as working-class party music amid the economic downturn of the latter half of the decade, and so much of the ThreeChordsAndTheTruth ethos of early PunkRock was meant as a [[SpiritualAntithesis direct repudiation]] of prog and everything it was believed to stand for.[[/note]]

Then, even before TheEighties officially started, a vociferous backlash emerged in the US from both white and Black music listeners. Whites gravitated towards various forms of rock, specifically {{punk|Rock}}, {{new wave|Music}}, and assorted types of {{hard rock}} and [[HeavyMetal metal]] (including HairMetal, which itself became the Disco of the '80s), and rejected the genre's hip, urban image. Meanwhile, the Black leaders of {{funk}} actively led a campaign to "rescue dance music from the blahs" as Music/GeorgeClinton put it, rejecting disco's fusion of "their" music style with mainstream pop. The UsefulNotes/{{punk}}s castigated disco for its political apathy, seeing it as music for mindless hedonists and comparing it to [[UsefulNotes/WeimarGermany Weimar-era]] cabaret music that was [[BreadAndCircuses lulling people into a false sense of security]] in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. (Several of them would, however, later admit in Creator/VH1's ''[[ILoveTheExties I Love the '70s]]'' that they thought the soundtrack to ''Film/SaturdayNightFever'' was brilliant.) Additionally, working-class music listeners in an era of economic malaise rapidly grew resentful of what they perceived to be a culture of elitism and ConspicuousConsumption in the disco scene, given the large amount of money needed to afford the flashy outfits and dance lessons that were necessary to survive on the dance floor.[[note]]A similar story played out with ProgressiveRock around the same time, never a critical darling to begin with, which fell into decline by the late '70s as listeners came to see it as the domain of [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie]] [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids idealists]] and [[InsufferableGenius pretentious, nerdy intellectuals]]. Its [[GenreBusting creative boundary-pushing]], need for expensive instruments and lessons to play them proficiently, and need for expensive stereo equipment to be heard properly were all seen as having pulled rock away from its roots as working-class party music amid the economic downturn of the latter half of the decade, and so much of the ThreeChordsAndTheTruth ethos of early PunkRock was meant as a [[SpiritualAntithesis direct repudiation]] of prog and everything it was believed to stand for.[[/note]]

And this isn't even taking into account disco's influence on underground music, especially PostPunk bands like Music/PublicImageLtd and ex-No Wavers like Material, Contortions, and Liquid Liquid. All operated under the basic premise of [[NeoclassicalPunkZydecoRockabilly "take a disco beat and pile weird stuff on top of it"]], often to great and innovative effect. [=PiL=] even had a hit with [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin a song called "Death Disco"]]... although [[Music/TheSexPistols who was]] [[Music/JohnLydon singing]] probably had some effect. In the U.S., Music/TalkingHeads were heavily influenced by disco while racking up hits and critical acclaim. There was also the {{Industrial}} fascination with Eurodisco, [[YouDontWantToKnow but that's another matter entirely]]. This marriage of punk and disco later evolved into the AlternativeDance and Madchester genres of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which saw the success of groups like Music/NewOrder, Music/TheStoneRoses, Music/HappyMondays, and Music/DepecheMode. Then, the overtly disco-influenced dance-punk genre of the early 2000s led to the rise of acclaimed indie band Music/LCDSoundsystem. The disco revival scene hit a peak in 2013, when Music/DaftPunk's single "Get Lucky" (sung by Music/PharrellWilliams, who himself released the hit dance song "Happy") became one of the biggest hits of 2013, proving that the influence of disco was ''not'' dead. The point certainly seemed to be made worldwide: not only did disco and overtly disco-inspired stuff see a huge upswing in the wake of "Get Lucky", but it even extended across media as well, with shows, movies, and video games openly acknowledging the disco revival.

Even among disco's base of hip urban audiences, listeners seemed to be tire of the music, with many clubs starting to spin NewWaveMusic instead as FM radio stuck to hard rock before Creator/{{MTV}} came along. This cross-pollination between new wave as it started to transition to AlternativeRock and dance music would culminate in the AlternativeDance movement mentioned below.

Even among disco's base of hip urban audiences, listeners seemed to be getting tired of the music, with many clubs starting to spin NewWaveMusic instead as FM radio stuck to hard rock before Creator/{{MTV}} came along. This cross-pollination between new wave as it started to transition to AlternativeRock and dance music would culminate in the AlternativeDance movement mentioned below.

A number of factors also added conservative culture war politics and rank bigotry into the mix. Disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of Black and female musicians and large presence of nonwhite and female disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Furthermore, it was associated with cities like [[TheBigRottenApple New York]] and Philadelphia in a time when America's major metropolises were increasingly seen as {{Vice Cit|y}}ies and hotbeds of a kind of labor/welfare-focused liberal politics that had fallen into disrepute by that point, with even the liberal President UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter backing away from the postwar "New Deal consensus" in favor of a "neoliberal" deregulatory program that his successors UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/BillClinton would more fully embrace. Social conservatives decried the sexually charged atmosphere of the music and the nightclub scene, as well as the popularity of recreational drugs among fans, though they also criticized rock music for these traits.

Even the hip urban audience that was disco's base seemed to tire of the music, with many clubs starting to spin NewWaveMusic instead as FM radio stuck to hard rock before Creator/{{MTV}} came along. This cross-pollination between new wave as it started to transition to AlternativeRock and dance music would culminate in the AlternativeDance movement mentioned below.

It got to the point where, on July 12, 1979, the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} [[UsefulNotes/MLBTeams White Sox]] (whose South Side base meant that their fans were Black and white in about equal measure) hosted a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Disco Demolition Night"]] promotion (see picture on main page, see Wiki/TheOtherWiki for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night more information]]), the brainchild of a White Sox executive and Steve Dahl, a DJ who had been fired from the rock station WDAI on Christmas Eve, 1978 as part of its switch to a disco format. After being snapped up by the rival rock station WLUP, Dahl reinvented himself a ShockJock who turned WLUP into a bully pulpit "dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as disco", where he regularly mocked his old station as "Disco D.I.E.", recorded a disco-bashing [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLFMELubizU parody]] of Music/RodStewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", and rallied his fans into a mock "anti-disco army" called the Insane Coho Lips. Fans could bring in their disco records in exchange for less than a dollar admission; since the game was a doubleheader[[note]]Incidentally, against the UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} Tigers, probably the closest thing the White Sox have to a rival within the American League. The Sox, of course, have a FandomRivalry with the Cubs, but until interleague play was instituted in 1997, they had only played each other in six official games--all part of the 1906 World Series.[[/note]], the plan was that the records would get blown up in the middle of the field between the games, and the stands at Comiskey would be extra-full because everyone and their uncle would pay to see those stupid disco records get what they deserved.

Of course, the most prominent influence disco had on underground music was ''the entire genre of HipHop'', which originated when [=DJs=] started to loop disco instrumentals and rhythmically toast over the top of them. At the time of writing, hip-hop is the most popular genre in the world, taking the place in culture that rock music enjoyed from the middle to the end of the 20th Century, and it is disco's most direct descendent. The second most popular genre right now is ElectronicDanceMusic, a descendent of HouseMusic, a Chicago-originating disco offshoot that emerged when artists began to loop the breakdown of disco instrumentals (figuring that the breakdown was the best part), soon realising they could then play synthesizers over the top of them. Disco is something that people call 'dead', when in reality, it [[TheNthDoctor regenerated]] into both of the two most popular music genres in the ''entire world''! It isn't possible for any genre to be ''less'' dead than that!

In short, by 1979 disco had a public image comparable to HairMetal in 1991, {{Boy Band}}s in 2002, or PostGrunge in 2012. Among the critics, nobody who wanted to be taken seriously treated it as much more than vapid, disposable pop, a type of music whose few good early hits were drowned out by [[SturgeonsLaw the volume of garbage that followed]], while among mainstream listeners, it was associated with a snobbish, decadent big-city lifestyle that they wanted no part of. Many radio stations promised "[[Music/TheBeeGees Bee Gee]]-free weekends", and a novelty country song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqSBQFJRKq8 "Disco Sucks"]] became a crossover hit on the pop charts. With its towering presence in mainstream music, many people were waiting for a chance to tell the world exactly what they thought of it.

A number of factors also added conservative culture war politics and rank bigotry into the mix. Disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of Black and female musicians and large presence of nonwhite and female disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Furthermore, it was associated with cities like [[TheBigRottenApple New York]] and Philadelphia in a time when America's major metropolises were increasingly seen as {{Vice Cit|y}}ies and hotbeds of a kind of labor/welfare-focused liberal politics that had fallen into disrepute by that point, with even the liberal President UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter backing away from the postwar "New Deal consensus" in favor of a "neoliberal" deregulatory program that his successors UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/BillClinton would more fully embrace. Social conservatives decried the sexually charged atmosphere of the music and the nightclub scene, as well as the popularity of recreational drugs among clubgoers. though they also criticized rock music for these traits.

A number of factors also added conservative culture war politics and rank bigotry into the mix. Disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of Black and female musicians and large presence of nonwhite and female disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Furthermore, it was associated with cities like [[TheBigRottenApple New York]] and Philadelphia in a time when America's major metropolises were increasingly seen as {{Vice Cit|y}}ies and hotbeds of a kind of labor/welfare-focused liberal politics that had fallen into disrepute by that point, with even the liberal President UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter backing away from the postwar "New Deal consensus" in favor of a "neoliberal" deregulatory program that his successors UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/BillClinton would more fully embrace.

In short, by 1979 disco had a public image comparable to HairMetal in 1991 or {{Boy Band}}s in 2002. Among the critics, nobody who wanted to be taken seriously treated it as much more than vapid, disposable pop, a type of music whose few good early hits were drowned out by [[SturgeonsLaw the volume of garbage that followed]], while among mainstream listeners, it was associated with a snobbish, decadent big-city lifestyle that they wanted no part of. Many radio stations promised "[[Music/TheBeeGees Bee Gee]]-free weekends", and a novelty country song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqSBQFJRKq8 "Disco Sucks"]] became a crossover hit on the pop charts. With its towering presence in mainstream music, many people were waiting for a chance to tell the world exactly what they thought of it.

Then, even before TheEighties officially started, a vociferous backlash emerged in the US from both white and Black music listeners. Whites gravitated towards various forms of rock, specifically {{punk|Rock}}, {{new wave|Music}}, and assorted types of {{hard rock}} and [[HeavyMetal metal]] (including HairMetal, which itself became the Disco of the '80s), and rejected the genre's hip, urban image. Meanwhile, the Black leaders of {{funk}} actively led a campaign to "rescue dance music from the blahs" as Music/GeorgeClinton put it, rejecting disco's fusion of "their" music style with mainstream pop. The UsefulNotes/{{punk}}s castigated disco for its political apathy, seeing it as music for mindless hedonists and comparing it to [[UsefulNotes/WeimarGermany Weimar-era]] cabaret music that was [[BreadAndCircuses lulling people into a false sense of security]] in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. (Several of them would, however, later admit in Creator/VH1's ''[[ILoveTheExties I Love the '70s]]'' that they thought the soundtrack to ''Film/SaturdayNightFever'' was brilliant.) Additionally, working-class music listeners in an era of economic malaise rapidly grew resentful of what they perceived to be a culture of elitism and ConspicuousConsumption in the disco scene, given the large amount of money needed to afford the flashy outfits and dance lessons that were necessary to survive on the dance floor.[[note]]A similar story played out with ProgressiveRock around the same time, which fell into decline by the late '70s as listeners came to see it as the domain of [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie]] [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids idealists]] and [[InsufferableGenius pretentious, nerdy intellectuals]]. Its [[GenreBusting creative boundary-pushing]], need for expensive instruments and lessons to play them proficiently, and need for expensive stereo equipment to be heard properly were all seen as having pulled rock away from its roots as working-class party music amid the economic downturn of the latter half of the decade, and so much of the ThreeChordsAndTheTruth ethos of early PunkRock was meant as a [[SpiritualAntithesis direct repudiation]] of prog and everything it was believed to stand for.[[/note]]

A number of factors also added conservative culture war politics and rank bigotry into the mix. Disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of Black and female musicians and large presence of nonwhite and female disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Furthermore, it was associated with cities like [[TheBigRottenApple New York]] and Philadelphia in a time when America's major metropolises were increasingly seen as {{Vice Cit|y}}ies and hotbeds of a kind of labor/welfare-focused liberal politics that had fallen into disrepute by that point, with even the liberal President UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter backing away from the postwar "New Deal consensus" in favor of a "neoliberal" deregulatory program that his successors UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/BillClinton would more fully embrace. Meanwhile, hard rock and punk rockers mocked it publicly,

A number of factors also added conservative culture war politics and rank bigotry into the mix. Disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of Black and female musicians and large presence of nonwhite and female disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, sexism, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Furthermore, it was associated with cities like [[TheBigRottenApple New York]] and Philadelphia in a time when America's major metropolises were increasingly seen as {{Vice Cit|y}}ies and hotbeds of a kind of labor/welfare-focused left-wing politics that had fallen into disrepute by that point, with even the liberal President UsefulNotes/JimmyCarter backing away from the postwar "New Deal consensus" in favor of a "neoliberal" deregulatory program that his successors UsefulNotes/RonaldReagan and UsefulNotes/BillClinton would more fully embrace. Meanwhile, hard rock and punk rockers mocked it publicly,

Then, even before TheEighties officially started, a vociferous backlash emerged in the US from both white and black music listeners. Whites gravitated towards various forms of rock, specifically {{punk|Rock}}, {{new wave|Music}}, and assorted types of {{hard rock}} and [[HeavyMetal metal]] (including HairMetal, which itself became the Disco of the '80s), and rejected the genre's hip, urban image. Meanwhile, the black leaders of {{funk}} actively led a campaign to "rescue dance music from the blahs" as Music/GeorgeClinton put it, rejecting disco's fusion of "their" music style with mainstream pop. The punks castigated disco for its political apathy, seeing it as music for mindless hedonists and comparing it to [[UsefulNotes/WeimarGermany Weimar-era]] cabaret music that was [[BreadAndCircuses lulling people into a false sense of security]] in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. Additionally, working-class music listeners in an era of economic malaise rapidly grew resentful of what they perceived to be a culture of elitism and ConspicuousConsumption in the disco scene, given the large amount of money needed to afford the flashy outfits and dance lessons that were necessary to survive on the dance floor.[[note]]A similar story played out with ProgressiveRock around the same time, which fell into decline by the late '70s as listeners came to see it as the domain of [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie]] [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids idealists]] and [[InsufferableGenius pretentious, nerdy intellectuals]] whose [[GenreBusting creative boundary-pushing]], need for expensive instruments and lessons to play them proficiently, as well as the need for expensive stereo equipment to be heard properly had pulled rock away from its roots as working-class party music amid an economic downturn in the second half of the decade.[[/note]]

Not helping matters was a number of factors that added rank bigotry into the mix: disco's popularity (and continued CultClassic status) in gay clubs, the popularity of black musicians and large presence of nonwhite disco fans, and the European origins of some successful musicians and record labels all became fodder for homophobia, xenophobia, racism, and nationalism to be thrown into the mix, leading disco to be perceived among a generation of young, blue-collar men as pretentious, effeminate, and un-American. Many radio stations promised "[[Music/TheBeeGees Bee Gee]]-free weekends", and a novelty country song called [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqSBQFJRKq8 "Disco Sucks"]] became a crossover hit on the pop charts. Meanwhile, hard rock and punk rockers mocked it publicly, even if several of them admitted in Creator/VH1's ''[[ILoveTheExties I Love the '70s]]'' that they thought the soundtrack to ''Film/SaturdayNightFever'' was brilliant.

It got to the point where, on July 12, 1979, the UsefulNotes/{{Chicago}} [[UsefulNotes/MLBTeams White Sox]] (whose South Side base meant that their fans were black and white in about equal measure) hosted a [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin "Disco Demolition Night"]] promotion (see picture on main page, see Wiki/TheOtherWiki for [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night more information]]), the brainchild of a White Sox executive and Steve Dahl, a DJ who had been fired from the rock station WDAI on Christmas Eve, 1978 as part of its switch to a disco format. After being snapped up by the rival rock station WLUP, Dahl reinvented himself a ShockJock who turned WLUP into a bully pulpit "dedicated to the eradication of the dreaded musical disease known as disco", where he regularly mocked his old station as "Disco D.I.E.", recorded a disco-bashing [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLFMELubizU parody]] of Music/RodStewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?", and rallied his fans into a mock "anti-disco army" called the Insane Coho Lips. Fans could bring in their disco records in exchange for less than a dollar admission; since the game was a doubleheader[[note]]Incidentally, against the UsefulNotes/{{Detroit}} Tigers, probably the closest thing the White Sox have to a rival within the American League. The Sox, of course, have a FandomRivalry with the Cubs, but until interleague play was instituted in 1997, they had only played each other in six official games--all part of the 1906 World Series.[[/note]], the plan was that the records would get blown up in the middle of the field between the games, and the stands at Comiskey would be extra-full because everyone and their uncle would pay to see those stupid disco records get what they deserved.

Finally, the anti-disco backlash is seen by many as having had a very ugly undercurrent. Music historians who have investigated why disco became so fiercely hated agree that overexposure and elitism weren't the sole factors behind the death of disco, but that [[ValuesDissonance homophobia, sexism, racism, and xenophobia]] also played into it. Disco had been one of the few genres to be equally popular across boundaries of race and sexuality (barring, of course, the white rock and black funk purists), with it being particularly big among LGBT+ communities, and a good number of popular disco acts originated in Europe. Robert Christgau [[http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pj78.php called out]] the latent homophobia and racism in the "Disco Sucks" movement as early as 1979, and witnesses to Disco Demolition Night noted a startling amount of destroyed records that belonged to black artists who never actually touched disco. What's more, [[https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/twisted-sisters-dee-snider-on-destroying-disco-why-lemmy-was-an-angel-181187/ the racism was more than open]] in some parts of the country, as Music/TwistedSister found out.[[note]]They had Music/BarryWhite hung in effigy during their concerts, and at a show in [[UsefulNotes/NewYorkState upstate New York]], the mostly white male patrons started cheering and yelling "Hang the n[=----=]r!" in approval. As a multiracial band that simply thought disco was overexposed and saw Barry White as a symbol of it, they were shocked by this reaction and quickly removed the effigy from future stage shows.[[/note]].

Then, even before TheEighties officially started, a vociferous backlash emerged in the US from both white and black music listeners. Whites gravitated towards various forms of rock, specifically {{punk|Rock}}, {{new wave|Music}}, and assorted types of {{hard rock}} and [[HeavyMetal metal]] (including HairMetal, which itself became the Disco of the '80s), and rejected the genre's hip, urban image. Meanwhile, the black leaders of {{funk}} (e.g. Music/GeorgeClinton) actively led a campaign to "rescue dance music from the blahs," rejecting disco's fusion of "their" music style with mainstream pop. The punks castigated disco for its political apathy, seeing it as music for mindless hedonists and comparing it to [[UsefulNotes/WeimarGermany Weimar-era]] cabaret music that was [[BreadAndCircuses lulling people into a false sense of security]] in the face of right-wing authoritarianism. Additionally, working-class music listeners in an era of economic malaise rapidly grew resentful of what they perceived to be a culture of elitism and ConspicuousConsumption in the disco scene, given the large amount of money needed to afford the flashy outfits and dance lessons that were necessary to survive on the dance floor.[[note]]A similar story played out with ProgressiveRock around the same time, which fell into decline by the late '70s as listeners came to see it as the domain of [[NewAgeRetroHippie hippie]] [[SillyRabbitIdealismIsForKids idealists]] and [[InsufferableGenius pretentious, nerdy intellectuals]] whose [[GenreBusting creative boundary-pushing]], need for expensive instruments and lessons to play them proficiently, as well as the need for expensive stereo equipment to be heard properly had pulled rock away from its roots as working-class party music amid an economic downturn in the second half of the decade.[[/note]]

What happened instead went down in pop music history. The White Sox were forced to forfeit the second game (the last time a game was forfeited in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} American League]]) after the explosion led to a riot--fueled by another ill-considered moneymaking venture that afternoon: Comiskey Park had a discount on beer that day ([[AlcoholInducedIdiocy whoops]]). Thirty-nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct, and while nobody died, estimates of the number of people injured were as high as thirty. While Disco Demolition Night did not by any means start the backlash, it added fuel to the fire and marked the [[GenreTurningPoint turning point]] where [[GenreKiller disco went into freefall]]. The backlash extended beyond disco to rock artists who were merely influenced by/adjacent to it, like Music/RodStewart and Music/DavidBowie, and African-American Creator/{{Motown}} musicians like Music/MarvinGaye.

Today, however, it seems as though the former TropeNamer for CondemnedByHistory is itself becoming [[PopularityPolynomial a subversion of its own trope]]. Younger generations have grown up with no memory of disco or their parents' hatred of it; to them, it's simply a style of music that they will like or dislike on its own merits. The Sirius XM disco station probably introduced more than a few new fans, as seen by the surprisingly large reaction to its removal, which forced it to be {{Uncanceled}}. Similarly, the advent of the internet allowed some people to discover disco for the first time after terrestrial radio stations stopped playing it. Many of the negative connotations associated with it have died out, and many of its enemies have toned down the vitriol and forgotten about it. This can be seen on the pop charts; in 2013 alone, a number of "disco revival" songs by artists as diverse as Music/BrunoMars, Creator/RobinThicke, and Music/DaftPunk have been Top 40 hits, while 2020 saw artists like Music/DuaLipa and Jessie Ware release heavily disco-inspired albums to critical acclaim. [[LaserGuidedKarma So the anti-disco backlash is, itself,]] [[{{Irony}} deader than disco]].

Today, however, it seems as though the former TropeNamer for CondemnedByHistory is itself becoming [[PopularityPolynomial a subversion of its own trope]]. Younger generations have grown up with no memory of disco or their parents' hatred of it; to them, it's simply a style of music that they will like or dislike on its own merits. The Sirius XM disco station probably introduced more than a few new fans, as seen by the surprisingly large reaction to its removal, which forced it to be {{Uncanceled}}. Similarly, the advent of the internet allowed some people to discover disco for the first time after terrestrial radio stations stopped playing it. Many of the negative connotations associated with it have died out, and many of its enemies have toned down the vitriol and forgotten about it. This can be seen on the pop charts; in 2013 alone, a number of "disco revival" songs by artists as diverse as Music/BrunoMars, Creator/RobinThicke, and Music/DaftPunk have been Top 40 hits, while 2020 saw artists like Music/DuaLipa and Jessie Ware release heavily disco-inspired albums to critical acclaim. [[{{Irony}} So the anti-disco backlash is, itself, deader than disco]].

!!Rise and backlash

!!The fall

What happened instead went down in pop music history. The White Sox were forced to forfeit the second game (the last time a game was forfeited in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} American League]]) after the explosion led to a riot--fueled by another ill-considered moneymaking venture that afternoon: Comiskey Park had a discount on beer that day ([[AlcoholInducedIdiocy whoops]]). Thirty-nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct, and while nobody died, estimates of the number of people injured were as high as thirty. While Disco Demolition Night did not by any means start the backlash, it added fuel to the fire and marked the [[GenreTurningPoint turning point]] where disco went into freefall. The backlash extended beyond disco to rock artists who were merely influenced by/adjacent to it, like Music/RodStewart and Music/DavidBowie, and African-American Creator/{{Motown}} musicians like Music/MarvinGaye.

!!The reevaluation

!!...and beyond

What happened instead went down in pop music history. The White Sox were forced to forfeit the second game (the last time a game was forfeited in the [[UsefulNotes/{{Baseball}} American League]]) after the explosion led to a riot--fueled by another ill-considered moneymaking venture that afternoon: Comiskey Park had a discount on beer that day ([[AlcoholInducedIdiocy whoops]]). Thirty-nine people were arrested for disorderly conduct, and while nobody died, estimates of the number of people injured were as high as thirty. While Disco Demolition Night did not by any means start the backlash, it added fuel to the fire and marked the [[GenreTurningPoint turning point]] where disco went into freefall. The backlash extended beyond disco to rock artists who were merely influenced by it, like Music/RodStewart and Music/DavidBowie, and African-American Creator/{{Motown}} musicians like Music/MarvinGaye.

Meanwhile, disco's old rival, rock music, is looked at in a harsher light in the modern era for these reasons, outside of performers like Music/JimiHendrix, Music/DavidBowie and Music/FreddieMercury, who broke racial and sexual boundaries as artists. Rock music overall is much less popular than it was in the late '70s, with many observers wondering if it will ever regain mainstream relevance. In the 21st century, it's rock that's being decried as out-of-touch and elitist.

Meanwhile, disco's old rival, rock music, is looked at in a harsher light in the modern era for these reasons, outside of performers like Music/JimiHendrix, Music/DavidBowie and Music/FreddieMercury, who broke racial and sexual boundaries as artists. Rock music overall is much less popular than it was in the late '70s, with many observers wondering if it will ever regain mainstream relevance.