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Italo disco (variously capitalized, and sometimes hyphenated as Italo-disco) is a music genre which originated in Italy in the late 1970s and was mainly produced in the 1980s. Italo disco evolved from the then-current underground dance, pop, and electronic music, both domestic and foreign (hi-NRG, Euro disco) and developed into a diverse genre. The genre employs , , , and occasionally . It is usually sung in English, and to a lesser extent in Italian and Spanish.
The origin of the genre's name is strongly tied to marketing efforts of the ZYX Music record label, which began licensing and marketing the music outside Italy in 1982.Folklore that ZYX boss Bernhard Mikulski coined the term Italo-disco in 1983 was long published on Wikipedia, but is unsubstantiated; to date, reliable third-party documentation has not been found to support whether ZYX label boss Mikulski himself named it, or whether ZYX was even the first to publish the term; it could just as easily have been a descriptor people were already using before someone at ZYX picked up on it. Italo disco faded in the early 1990s, then split into many genres (Eurobeat, Italo house, Italo dance).
There is no documentation of where the term "Italo-Disco" first appeared, but its origins are generally traced to Italian and other European disco recordings released in the West German market. Examples include the phrase "Original Italo-Disco" on the sleeve of the West German edition of "Girls on Me" by Amin-Peck in 1982, and the 1983 compilation album The Best of Italo-Disco. These records, along with the Italo Boot Mix megamix, were released by Bernhard Mikulski on his ZYX Music label, who was therefore credited with coining the term "Italo disco". The Best of and Boot Mix compilations each became a 16-volume series that culminated in 1991. Both series primarily featured disco music of Italian origin, often licensed from independent Italian labels which had limited distribution outside Italy, as well as songs in a similar style by other European artists.
The presenters of the Italian music show Discoring (produced by RAI) usually referred to Italo disco tracks as "rock elettronico" (electronic rock) or "balli da discoteca" (disco dance) before the term "Italo disco" came into existence.
The adoption of and other electronic instruments by disco artists led to electronic dance music, which spawned many subgenres such as hi-NRG in America and space disco in Europe. Italo disco's influences include Italian producer Giorgio Moroder, French musician Didier Marouani, Italo-French drummer Cerrone, and the San Francisco hi-NRG producer Patrick Cowley, who worked with singers as Sylvester James and Paul Parker.
In the late 1970s, Italo disco group D.D. Sound (La Bionda) released the song "1, 2, 3, 4, Gimme Some More". DD Sound Retrieved 06 July 2022 In 1979, Jacques Fred Petrus and Mauro Malavasi created the soulful post-disco groups Change and B.B. & Q. Band. B. B. & Q. Band Artist Bio AllMusic. Retrieved 06 July 2022 In 1981, both groups gained US R&B and Dance hits with "Paradise" and "On the Beat" respectively.
Italo disco often features electronic sounds, , , catchy melodies, , overdubs, and heavily accented English language lyrics. By 1983, Italo disco's instrumentation was predominantly electronic. Along with love, Italo disco themes deal with and outer space, sometimes combining all three in songs like "Robot Is Systematic" (1982) by Lectric Workers and "Spacer Woman" (1983) by Charlie.In 1983, there were frequent hit singles, and labels such as American Disco, Crash, Merak, Sensation and X-Energy appeared. The popular label Discomagic Records released more than thirty singles within the year. It was also the year that the term "Italo disco" became widely known outside Italy, with the release of the first volumes of The Best of Italo Disco compilation series on the West German record label ZYX. After 1983, Italo disco was also produced outside Italy.
Although Italo disco was successful in mainland Europe during the 1980s, only a few singles reached the UK charts, such as Ryan Paris's "Dolce Vita", Laura Branigan's "Self Control", Baltimora's "Tarzan Boy", Spagna's "Call Me" and Sabrina Salerno "Boys", all of which were top 5 hits. Italo disco maintained an influence in the UK's underground music scenes in the UK, and its impact can be heard in the music of several British electronic acts such as the Pet Shop Boys, Erasure and New Order.
In English-speaking countries, it was called Italo disco and hi-NRG. In Mexico, the style is known just as "disco", having nothing to do with the 1970s genre. West German productions were sung in English and were characterized by an emphasis on melody, exaggerated production, and a more earnest approach to the themes of love; examples may be found in the works of: Modern Talking, Fancy, American-born singer and Fancy protégé Grant Miller, Bad Boys Blue, Joy, Silent Circle, the Twins, Lian Ross, C. C. Catch, Blue System and London Boys.
During the mid-1980s, spacesynth, a derivation of Italo disco, developed. It was mostly instrumental, featured space sounds, and was exemplified by musicians, such as: Koto, Proxyon, Rofo, Cyber People, Hipnosis, Laserdance and Mike Mareen (whose music inhabited the spacesynth/hi-NRG overlap).
Around 1989 in Italy, Italo disco evolved into Italo house when Italian Italo disco artists experimented with harder beats and the "house" sound.
At least one modern history of " space disco" traces the genre's origins to science fiction themes (outer space, robots, and the future) in the titles, lyrics and cover artwork of dance music in the late 1970s. Plausible associations are drawn between the popularity of Star Wars (released mid-1977), the subsequent surge of interest in science fiction themes in popular culture, and the release of a number of science fiction themed and "futuristic"-sounding (synthesizer and arpeggiator-infused) disco music worldwide. The most commercially successful space disco tracks were "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" (1977) by Meco, and "Automatic Lover" (1978) by Dee D. Jackson, with each song reaching the top ten in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom. Even in Italy the Space genre had some followers, including I Signori della Galassia who showed up with glam sci-fi inspired clothes and whose album Iceman is still highly sought after by collectors today. Additional examples of space disco usually include the compositions "Just Blue" and "Symphony" (both 1978) of France band Space, the same for the track Magic Fly; additional tracks by Dee D. Jackson during the 1970s and 1980s, and "I Feel Space" by Lindstrøm.
Labels producing this type of music include
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