History Main / DiscoSucks

* ''Series/{{Castle}}'': When the body of a famed '70s mob boss is found, Castle is excited because "It's a chance to solve the greatest mystery of the disco era... except for the popularity of disco itself."

* In ''[[WesternAnimation/GarfieldSpecials Garfield Gets a Life]]'', Jon attends a club and disco dances. A guy yells at him, "Hey, jerk! Disco is ''dead''!"

By 1980, disco had become [[DeadHorseGenre so unpopular]] that T-shirts were printed that said "Disco Sucks", musicians who took influence from or influenced disco had to do everything they could to distance themselves from it, and it became a stock punchline across popular culture. This trope is meant to reflect that point in time, referring specifically to moments in media when disco is used as a stock TakeThat or {{Acceptable Target|s}}.

This backlash was so pervasive from TheEighties through the [[TheNineties mid-90s]] that the CondemnedByHistory trope was initially called "Deader Than Disco", and [[Administrivia/RenamedTropes stayed that way all the way until early 2021]]. Since the late 90s onwards, however, this has become a DiscreditedTrope, as younger generations have grown up with no memory of disco or their parents' hatred of it, and thus look at the genre on its own merits. What's more, historians and scholars have argued that [[ValuesDissonance racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia]] helped fuel the anti-disco backlash, too. A full account of the history of the backlash, the factors behind it, and its reevaluation can be seen on [[Analysis/DiscoSucks the Analysis page]].

** On the flip side, his videos on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxvaIo-6bhk&t=279s "Funkytown"]] by Lipps Inc. and ''[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPCJQ-6zlxQ&t=681s Ringo the 4th]]'' by Music/RingoStarr emphasize that disco really was overexposed by mid-1979, and that the record industry deserves most of the blame thanks to how they tried to turn disco into a {{cash cow|Franchise}}. He thinks that the reevaluation of disco in the 2010s and '20s is at least somewhat tinted by the NostalgiaFilter, as time had preserved only the classic tracks and its roots with marginalized groups and winnowed out all the garbage, how it was hijacked by the mainstream, and all the white rock musicians who jumped onto disco sounds in half-baked fashion.
** In his video on the novelty single [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzw6WpwYSv8 "Disco Duck"]] by Music/RickDees (which he called a song so corny that it ''should've'' killed disco right there), he admits to having a fascination with disco, less for the actual music than for the culture around it, specifically how its reputation has [[PopularityPolynomial seesawed]] over the years.
--->'''Todd''': For five or six years, [disco] was basically the only music being made, and then it got hit with backlash so hard that all of the sudden it was the ''worst'' music ever made, and then after about twenty years of being [[AnyoneRememberPogs a total punchline]], it flipped back so hard in the other direction that now if you try and say that disco sucks, people look at you funny.

* In his ''One-Hit Wonderland'' series, WebVideo/ToddInTheShadows has covered disco and the backlash it faced on multiple occasions.
** His video on [[https://youtu.be/pvzgn9XSjgI?t=4m47s "Word Up!"]] by Music/{{Cameo}} has him touching on how the backlash hit ''all'' Black music and often turned into a rather ugly display of racism, creating a time period in the early '80s (one that lasted until roughly 1983 when Music/MichaelJackson and Music/{{Prince}} got big) when Black artists could not achieve pop crossover hits no matter how successful they were outside the pop arena.
** On the flip side, his video on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxvaIo-6bhk&t=279s "Funkytown"]] by Lipps Inc. emphasizes that disco really was overexposed by mid-1979, and that the record industry deserves most of the blame thanks to how they tried to turn disco into a {{cash cow|Franchise}}.

* Subverted on, of all things, ‘’WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead''. When shown the video for “Jive Talkin” by the Bee Gees, the two declare the Brothers Gibb to be “pretty cool.”

* Subverted on, of all things, '’WesternAnimation/BeavisAndButthead''. When shown the video for “Jive Talkin” by the Bee Gees, the two declare the Brothers Gibb to be “pretty cool.”