Wonderland Burlesque: Wonderland Burlesque's Down The Rabbit Hole: Italo-Disco

Sunday, March 02, 2025

Wonderland Burlesque's Down The Rabbit Hole: Italo-Disco

Wonderland Burlesque's

Down The Rabbit Hole:

Italo-Disco

Down The Rabbit Hole merely places a spotlight on something slightly unusual that's caught my interest. With the help of Wikipedia, YouTube, and other sites, I gather information and learn something new.

Today, we take a look at Italo-Disco.

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Talk about your guilty pleasures!

This genre first came to my attention while researching Twenty One's The Eyes Of Don Johnson. To learn more? I didn't have to go very far.

In fact, I believe that Angelica Frey at Discogs has probably written the master class on this genre. So, because I'm lazy, I'll let her do all the heavy-lifting. Why mess with perfection?

Here's Frey and Giuseppe Savoni's list of the essential cuts which define this genre. To read her insightful track-by-track description, head to Discogs.

From Angelica Frey:

"Italo-Disco is a genre that thrived between the late 1970s and mid-1980s and comes back in style about every five years. With its sugary choruses and glittering instrumentals, it’s not hard to hear why. The name, coined by German discographer Bernhard Mikulski, the owner of ZYX label, describes the disco-inflected records from the namesake region at the time.

While quite heterogeneous, Italo-Disco combines synths, 4/4, the Philly, and the Munich sounds and favors simple, straightforward melodies. It’s also extraordinarily prolific. Labels like Disco Magic had an assembly-line approach. And often times, the de-facto leader of an act was not necessarily the person providing vocals.

Italo-Disco’s influence reverberated internationally. Eiffel 65‘s Blue would not exist without it, nor would Eurodance and its child-friendly varieties seen in the 1990s. Japan’s own interpretation of Eurobeat also owes a debt to Italo-Disco.

While gathering the essential singles, Discogs consulted music curator, DJ, and scholar Giuseppe 'Disco Bambino' Savoni. Consider these ten tracks a window into the genre that may never disappear into the history books."