Italo disco

Italo disco (variously capitalized, and sometimes hyphenated as Italo-disco)[1] is a music genre which originated in Italy in the late 1970s and was mainly produced in the 1980s.

[4] 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.

Italo disco's influences include Italian producer Giorgio Moroder, French musician Didier Marouani, Italo-French drummer Cerrone, and the San Francisco-based hi-NRG producer Patrick Cowley, who worked with singers as Sylvester and Paul Parker.

Along with love, Italo disco themes deal with robots and space, sometimes combining all three in songs like "Robot Is Systematic" (1982) by Lectric Workers and "Spacer Woman" (1983) by Charlie.Then also new musical genres that had set aside the rock of the 1970s thanks to new groups, such as Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet and great pop artists Michael Jackson and Madonna.

The 1980s brought the electronics with real instruments, experimenting new sounds, in short, it was a decade of great change in modern music.

[9] In 1983, there were frequent hit singles, and labels such as American Disco, Crash, Merak, Sensation and X-Energy appeared.

[1] Canada, particularly Quebec, produced several remarkable Italo disco acts, including Trans X ("Living on Video"), Lime ("Angel Eyes"), Rational Youth ("City of Night"), Pluton & the Humanoids ("World Invaders"), Purple Flash Orchestra ("We Can Make It"), and Tapps ("Forbidden Lover").

[citation needed] 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.

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).

As Italo disco declined in Europe, Italian and West German producers adapted the sound to Japanese tastes, creating "Eurobeat".

[13] 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.