EVERY GENRE PROJECT - August 17 - Nu-Disco

Genre of the Day - Nu-Disco

Album of the Day - Fever by Kylie Minogue (2002)

There is a stretch of driving through Utah with no gas stations to speak of except for a tiny one-pump operation thirty minutes off the road. That doesn’t present a problem if you suitably filled up before embarking on its winding path. In the midst of being distracted by the state’s heavenly beauty, buffeted by an unexpected windstorm pushing the car side-to-side on the highway, and getting eaten away by an emotional cavern wide as the canyons in the distance, the road ahead suddenly felt unending as I realized with a shock that we had fully ran out of gas and neglected to notice this problem sooner. After invoking modern America’s closest thing to divine provenance (Triple A), the only relief I felt while waiting for a few hours was that I would get to listen to a genre that I knew would be by best musical chance of shaking off all the plagues of this week, and a moment of levity amidst a series of genres marked by their emotional and place-based intensity. Just like hope, disco is never lost—it has lived on decades past its would-be public execution in nu-disco.

Ironically, I was just talking to my friend the other day about a few TikToks I’d seen claiming Sabrina Carpenter’s mega smash “Espresso” was directly indebted to Doja Cat’s “Say So.” I lamented how people didn’t seem to understand how they were both just clever, irresistible hits in this last few years’ wave of nu-disco bearing no direct similarity. Rightfully, my friend took me out of my chronic-music site-browsing world by pointing out that the average person doesn’t know what the hell nu-disco is. Luckily, I have something to celebrate: today I hit 100 subscribers! I know that in the wider context of Substack it’s small, but it’s huge to me. I’m very grateful for the community I’ve cultivated and how much it’s grown over the past few months especially. Thank you all endlessly for reading any of my ramblings. As this project eases into its second act, I’d like to make it more immersive. So, here’s a poll for today. 

Disco’s few years of dominance may have ended in its former lovers taking refuge in house, techno, and everything borne from those increasingly electronic takes, but its glory days are as salient in cultural memory now as it was in the late ‘70s. It’s kitschy, it’s joyous, it’s a rich and sumptuous release from emotional constraints. As someone who was born decades after it ‘died,’ I look back and think that it still seems shorthand for a unified moment of collective cultural joy that seems more scattered today. Not only that, but disco also seems distinctly cosmopolitan: it was a conversation between Black American funk and soul that became rapturously embraced by European audiences who made disco a playground for uninhibited sonic futurism. Nu-disco emerged out of the early 2000s’ indie scene after the late ‘90s began to show signals of fulfilling the prophecy of the twenty-year trend cycle. It harkened explicitly back to the dazzling strings, commanding grooves, and fashion of ‘70s disco with sleeker electronic techniques, though with more faithful interpretations than more house-leaning genres like French touch. Artists like Jamiroqui and Daft Punk helped bring it to prominence, and nu-disco suddenly became inescapable in the mainstream at the dawn of the 2020s. Its euphoria has been a welcome contrast to moodier shades of pop in the strained last few years; this dichotomy was on full display last summer as Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” buoyed the emotional weight of Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For?” on Barbie’s megawatt soundtrack. 

Nu-disco’s most faithful student in the realm of pop stars is easily Kylie Minogue, who returns to its escapist qualities about every decade or so with an enthusiasm that can sweep even the biggest skeptics off their feet and under the lights. Her commitment is admirable: at 2002’s BRIT Awards, she declared herself one with the sonic realm as she emerged out of a disc. She was performing her juggernaut “Can’t Get You Out of My Head,” the unshakeable Cloud 9 of today’s album, a transcendent nu-disco moment that in a rare feat sounds just as transmitted from the future as Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s alien torch songs. Though it’s Fever reaching its maximum temperature, the album is a bright blaze through-and-through beginning with her sly come-ons in “More More More[‘s]” persistent, velvet ascendance. Surveying her dance floor with tact, she morphs into whichever intensity of disco diva is needed—she wields her most demanding energy in the electro-funk number “Give It to Me” and sweetly demurs (people too often neglect to remember how yearning many disco songs were) on “Fragile.” “Dancefloor” is its most literal moment, lush with luxuriant strings, yet it still manages to be delectable in its organ groove rather than smothering. The album is a punchy testament to nu-disco at the height of its powers, equal parts crisp sophistication, uninhibited surrender, and unburdened nostalgia, like a night you don’t want to see end.