Two music legends make their comeback this Friday: Diana Ross with Thank you, his first album in twenty years, and Trip, from the ABBA group, forty years after its separation. These comebacks inevitably evoke the scintillating 1970s (with or without nostalgia) and the great disco period. A musical register synonymous with party, glitter, legs of eph, frenzied dance, trance on the dancefloor, letting go … The perfect outfit to clear your head and a cocktail that we really need at the moment.
And that’s good because the disco is back again (yes, again!). His spirit and the desire to live that he represents are always invited in small touches here and there. In music, in the words of Juliette Armanet or the clips of Clara Luciani. In fashion, at
Fendi during Milan’s latest fashion weekend, with a colorful, exuberant and glamorous show. In the decoration, too, via the trend of “the domesticated mirror ball” noticed last month by the
Vogue American. The disco is back. But was he really gone?
From Chic to Juliette Armanet
Heir to soul and funk, disco music was born in the 1970s and enjoyed its heyday with artists such as Chic, Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor. In Europe, it is developing in parallel in a more electronic version with the Italian Giorgio Moroder or the French Cerrone. At the time, everyone got into it, the Rolling Stones like Sheila, Dalida or Claude François. She disappears with the end of the decade, then reappears, a few years later, in new forms, such as new wave, before being kissed by Madonna. “The disco has infiltrated absolutely everywhere, notes David Blot, co-author of the comic book on the history of electronic music. The Song of the Machine (Editions Allia) and host at Radio Nova. His influence was permanent even though people no longer used the term. “
His soul also hovers on the side of electronic music from the 1990s with house, techno, and the French Touch. “If it hadn’t existed, Daft Punk wouldn’t be the same! », Points out David Blot. The group takes hold of its first tracks until the last album Random Access Memories, to which major figures such as Nile Rodgers and Giorgio Moroder were invited in 2013. Pop is also bathed in a disco influence: Lady Gaga, Doja Cat or Dua Lipa have recently proven this.
Even the new generation of French song is getting started! In mid-September, Juliette Armanet made a sensational comeback with a title as festive as it is melancholy entitled The last day of the disco. “I want to pass it on your skin, to blush like a poppy / The last day of the disco, I want to hear it in stereo and tell you that there is nothing more beautiful”, she sings there with ardor. Perched on wedge heels and dressed in sequined trousers, the singer delivers a fiery dance in her music video.
A fury for life that we found a few months earlier in the song Breathe again by Clara Luciani, where the artist urged: “it has to move, it has to tremble, it has to sweat again!” “
A timeless groove
These two fresh hits evoke disco, its catchy, frantic melodies, its joyful and liberating spirit. Proof that it is an indestructible music? Rather timeless, sprawling and particularly influential. “No one really relaunched the genre. I don’t think any band was strictly disco after the disco era, but it’s everywhere anyway, ”comments David Blot.
“We don’t bury the disco. It is almost a little vital in music, believes for her part Juliette Armanet near 20 minutes. All the musical decades have recovered this genre because it is also quite knowledgeable musically. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not that easy to get people to dance. “She adds:” We need to go through that again to find this very particular science of arrangements. And above all the need for dance, for that groove, very warm, very round, it is good for the soul! “
The disco spirit has not finished taking over nightclubs either. Logical since the dancefloors are its raison d’être. The Pamela club opened its doors in mid-October on the left bank in Paris, with, for the occasion, Cerrone in guest brand. Founded by Pierre Delabasserue and Adam Spielman, the new place is “welcoming, with a very seventies identity but a lot of modernity”. Invoking the legendary Studio 54 or Paradise Garage, two former New York party institutions, its decor and programming are reminiscent of the 1970s. artistic [gérée par Joe Lewandowski] in a disco house identity with very groovy roots, black music, soul and funk ”, we are told. A cocktail cleverly orchestrated by the electro music labels Roche Musique or Madman Regent, which “has fervently defended disco and groove since 2014”, as explained.
his site.
Seriously festive music
What is hiding behind this disproportionate love for disco? Perhaps an overwhelming craving for energy and the feeling of letting go it provides.
During the release of her last album, Clara Luciani confided to 20 minutes to have lived badly the first confinement. “I was very anxious, I found it very painful and, to get out of bed, I listened to Abba, Elton John, songs that have always attracted me but which were not necessarily songs that I listened to everyday. »In the columns of JDD, she added: “The disco saved me, these songs made me want to get up in the morning. What I like about disco is the idea of being able to cry while singing. “
This paradox is precisely the very spirit of this music created in reaction to the disillusionment of the 1960s, to the dismay of a youth confronted with racism, homophobia, war and violence. “Basically, it’s music that is much more serious and sadder than one can imagine, which is aware of the state of things,” recalls David Blot.
Nothing very surprising therefore, that disco flourishes in a post-Covid period marked by confinements, constraints and a certain disenchantment. “It is obvious that there is also this need that the music is physical, that it brings into play the body. I think it tells something about what we went through, that all of a sudden we are not only in the intellect but in the outlet ”, analyzes Juliette Armanet. Never extinguished, the disco flame is constantly ready to be rekindled.