Hi-NRG (pronounced "high energy")[2] is a genre of uptempo disco or electronic dance music (EDM) that originated during the late 1970s and early 1980s.
As a music genre, typified by its fast tempo, staccato hi-hat rhythms (and the four-on-the-floor pattern), reverberated "intense" vocals and "pulsating" octave basslines, it was particularly influential on the disco scene.
Lyrics tend to be overtly camp, kitschy, tongue-in-cheek, sexually suggestive with double entendres[5] but also occasionally sentimental or maudlin.
One form of hi-NRG, as performed by Megatone Records artists and Ian Levine, is any uptempo disco and dance music, whether containing octave basslines or not, that often features covers of "classic" Motown hits (Boys Town Gang) and torch songs, and is often "theatrical" in performance, featuring female (and male) musicians with facetious diva[10] personas and male musicians sometimes in "drag" (Sylvester, Divine), cabarets/musical theater (Vicki Sue Robinson, Sharon Redd).
[14] Donna Summer was interviewed about her single "I Feel Love", which was a mostly electronic, relatively high-tempo Euro disco song without a strong funk component.
Eurobeat, dance-pop and freestyle artists such as Shannon, Stock Aitken & Waterman, Taylor Dayne, Freeez and Michael Sembello were also labeled as "hi-NRG" when sold in the United States.
Producers such as Bobby Orlando and Patrick Cowley created "an aural fantasy of a futuristic club populated entirely by Tom of Finland studs.
[19][20] In the mid-1980s, hi-NRG producers in the dance and pop charts included Ian Levine and Stock Aitken Waterman, both of whom worked with many different artists.
Despite this, hi-NRG music is still being produced and played in various forms, including many remixed versions of mainstream pop hits, some with re-recorded vocals.