Well-known artists included the Bee Gees, ABBA, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Giorgio Moroder, Baccara, The Jacksons, Michael Jackson, Boney M, Earth Wind & Fire, Rick James, ELO,[9] Average White Band, Chaka Khan, Chic, KC and the Sunshine Band, Thelma Houston, Sister Sledge, Sylvester, The Trammps, Barry White, Diana Ross, Kool & the Gang, and Village People.

Notable U.S. disco DJs include Francis Grasso of The Sanctuary, David Mancuso of The Loft, Frankie Knuckles of the Chicago Warehouse, Larry Levan of the Paradise Garage, Nicky Siano of The Gallery, Walter Gibbons, Karen Mixon Cook, Jim Burgess, John "Jellybean" Benitez, Richie Kulala of Studio 54, and Rick Salsalini.

"[43] The promiscuity and public sex at discos was part of a broader trend towards exploring a freer sexual expression in the 1970s, an era that is also associated with "swingers clubs, hot tubs, [and] key parties.

In their history of the disc jockey and club culture, Bill Brewster and Frank Broughton describe the Sanctuary as "poured full of newly liberated gay men, then shaken (and stirred) by a weighty concoction of dance music and pharmacoia of pills and potions, the result is a festivaly of carnality.

[50] By describing the music, drugs, and liberated mentality as a trifecta coming together to create the festival of carnality, Brewster and Broughton are inciting all three as stimuli for the dancing, sex, and other embodied movements that contributed to the corporeal vibrations within the Sanctuary.

Also during the 1960s, the Motown record label developed its own approach, described as having "1) simply structured songs with sophisticated melodies and chord changes, 2) a relentless four-beat drum pattern, 3) a gospel use of background voices, vaguely derived from the style of the Impressions, 4) a regular and sophisticated use of both horns and strings, 5) lead singers who were halfway between pop and gospel music, 6) a group of accompanying musicians who were among the most dextrous, knowledgeable, and brilliant in all of popular music (Motown bassists have long been the envy of white rock bassists) and 7) a trebly style of mixing that relied heavily on electronic limiting and equalizing (boosting the high range frequencies) to give the overall product a distinctive sound, particularly effective for broadcast over AM radio.

Other influential DJs and remixers who helped to establish what became known as the "disco sound" included David Mancuso, Nicky Siano, Shep Pettibone, Larry Levan, Walter Gibbons, and Chicago-based Frankie Knuckles.

Political issues like the backlash from the Civil Rights Movement culminating in the form of race riots, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy, and the Watergate scandal, left many feeling disillusioned and hopeless.

"The driving force of the New York underground dance scene in which disco was forged was not simply that city's complex ethnic and sexual culture but also a 1960s notion of community, pleasure and generosity that can only be described as hippie", he says.

"[66] The explosion of disco is often claimed to be found in the private dance parties held by New York City DJ David Mancuso's home that became known as The Loft, an invitation-only non-commercial underground club that inspired many others.

"[52] Film critic Roger Ebert called the popular embrace of disco's exuberant dance moves an escape from "the general depression and drabness of the political and musical atmosphere of the late seventies.

Originating at venues such as the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, it quickly spread to other UK dancehalls and nightclubs like the Chateau Impney (Droitwich), Catacombs (Wolverhampton), the Highland Rooms at Blackpool Mecca, Golden Torch (Stoke-on-Trent), and Wigan Casino.

Featuring spins, flips, karate kicks, and backdrops, club dancing styles were often inspired by the stage performances of touring American soul acts such as Little Anthony & the Imperials and Jackie Wilson.

Other disco producers such as Tom Moulton took ideas and techniques from dub music (which came with the increased Jamaican migration to New York City in the 1970s) to provide alternatives to the "four on the floor" style that dominated.

[78] Norman Whitfield was an influential producer and songwriter at Motown records, renowned for creating innovative "psychedelic soul" songs with many hits for Marvin Gaye, the Velvelettes, the Temptations, and Gladys Knight & the Pips.

The Supremes, the group that made Ross famous, scored a handful of hits in the disco clubs without her, most notably 1976's "I'm Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking" and, their last charted single before disbanding, 1977's "You're My Driving Wheel".

The Four Seasons themselves were briefly signed to Motown's MoWest label, a short-lived subsidiary for R&B and soul artists based on the West Coast, and there the group produced one album, Chameleon (1972) – to little commercial success in the US.

In 1977 Summer, Moroder and Bellotte further released "I Feel Love", as the B-side of "Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)", which revolutionized dance music with its mostly electronic production and was a massive worldwide success, spawning the Hi-NRG subgenre.

[65] The portrayal of the dance floor in Saturday Night Fever marked a reappropriation by straight male culture, turning it into a space for men to showcase their prowess and pursue partners of the opposite sex.

In 1978, Donna Summer's multi-million-selling vinyl single disco version of "MacArthur Park" was number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.

[93] From mid-1978 to late 1979, Summer continued to release singles such as "Last Dance", "Heaven Knows" (with Brooklyn Dreams), "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights" and "On the Radio", all very successful songs, landing in the top five or better, on the Billboard pop charts.

Also noteworthy are The Trammps' "Disco Inferno" (1976), (1978, reissue due to the popularity gained from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack), Heatwave's "Boogie Nights" (1977), Evelyn "Champagne" King's "Shame" (1977), A Taste of Honey's "Boogie Oogie Oogie" (1978), Cheryl Lynn's "Got to Be Real" (1978), Alicia Bridges's "I Love the Nightlife" (1978), Patrick Hernandez's "Born to Be Alive" (1978), Earth, Wind & Fire's "September" (1978) and "Boogie Wonderland" (1979), Peaches & Herb's "Shake Your Groove Thing" (1978), Sister Sledge's "We Are Family" and "He's the Greatest Dancer" (both 1979), McFadden and Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" (1979), Anita Ward's "Ring My Bell" (1979), Kool & the Gang's "Ladies' Night" (1979) and "Celebration" (1980), The Whispers's "And the Beat Goes On" (1979), Stephanie Mills's "What Cha Gonna Do with My Lovin'" (1979), Lipps Inc.'s "Funkytown" (1980), The Brothers Johnson's "Stomp!"

The Eagles referenced disco with "One of These Nights" (1975)[98] and "Disco Strangler" (1979), Paul McCartney & Wings with "Silly Love Songs" (1976) and "Goodnight Tonight" (1979), Queen with "Another One Bites the Dust" (1980), the Rolling Stones with "Miss You" (1978) and "Emotional Rescue" (1980), Stephen Stills with his album Thoroughfare Gap (1978), Electric Light Orchestra with "Shine a Little Love" and "Last Train to London" (both 1979), Chicago with "Street Player" (1979), the Kinks with "(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman" (1979), the Grateful Dead with "Shakedown Street", The Who with "Eminence Front" (1982), and the J. Geils Band with "Come Back" (1980).

[107] The film The Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle and its soundtrack album contained a disco medley of Sex Pistols songs, entitled Black Arabs and credited to a group of the same name.

Earth, Wind & Fire also survived the anti-disco trend and continued to produce successful singles at roughly the same pace for several more years, in addition to an even longer string of R&B chart hits that lasted into the 1990s.

[citation needed] Factors that have been cited as leading to the decline of disco in the United States include economic and political changes at the end of the 1970s, as well as burnout from the hedonistic lifestyles led by participants.

The Eurodisco song I Feel Love, produced by Giorgio Moroder for Donna Summer in 1976, has been described as a milestone and blueprint for electronic dance music because it was the first to combine repetitive synthesizer loops with a continuous four-on-the-floor bass drum and an off-beat hi-hat, which would become a main feature of techno and house ten years later.

Drawing from a diverse range of non-disco influences and techniques, such as the "one-man band" style of Kashif and Stevie Wonder and alternative approaches of Parliament-Funkadelic, it was driven by synthesizers, keyboards, and drum machines.

[132] For shock value, James Chance, a notable member of the no wave scene, penned an article in the East Village Eye urging his readers to move uptown and get "trancin' with some superradioactive disco voodoo funk".

In 2014 Brazilian Globo TV, the second biggest television network in the world, aired Boogie Oogie, a telenovela about the Disco Era that takes place between 1978 and 1979, from the hit fever to the decadence.