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Seriously. Think of the reasons you didn't like it. Here is USA music writer Ken Barnes' take on it:
This is the kind of music rock 'n' rollers love to hate. And though much of it may be lightweight, the reasons why it was (and is) reviled carry some serious sociological tonnage.
This music was so disliked that well over a decade later the very word "disco" is still a stigma that musical astigmatics attach indiscriminately to anything with a dance beat. Back then, during its late-'70s peak, disco and its backlash threatened to foment out-and-out class war.
What was the problem? Let's concede that some disco was repetitive. Certainly its radio omnipresence bred and spread discontent. But that's not enough - you could cite exactly the same conditions with regard to the simple-minded bubblegum music of 1968-70, but nobody publicly demolished piles of Ohio Express albums or trashed baseball stadiums in mass anti-gum rallies.
No, the kind of sentiment that led to the 1979 Comiskey Park disco destruction derby (when mobs of Chicagoland rockers were so invigorated by the demolition of 20,000 disco records that they wreaked some impromptu havoc on the ballpark itself, causing the cancellation of the second game of a White Sox doubleheader) was something stronger. Some of the reasons disco was so violently loathed by rock 'n' rollers are...
• It was alienating. It's a minor point, but unlike the freeform dancing late-'60s/early-'70s pop inspired, or the slack-jawed milling that was the norm at rock concerts, disco demanded a degree of dancing skill quite foreign to the rock culture, requiring as it did choreography, coordination with a partner, and agility.
• Along the same lines, disco's renascent sense of fashion (laughable as some of its manifestations may seem today) clashed with the jeans and T-shirt rock mentality. Anyone dressing up for disco purposes was cruising for a dressing down.
• More seriously, disco was the music of threatening subcultures. Women and blacks performed most disco hits. And the natural constituency of disco - both record-buying and club-going -
- was blacks, Latinos, the urban working class... all regarded with suspicion by the rock majority.
• Disco was also the music of choice for a large proportion of gays, whose clubs nurtured the sound, who spread he word, and who formed a solid backbone of support. All of which helps explain why
"disco sucks," the universal catchphrase of the rock set circa 1978-81, was really a euphemistic way of saying "(ethno-sexual epithet of your choice) sucks!" Fear and loathing handily exorcised by leer and
frothing.
The lingering effects of the disco backlash's psychological baggage have distorted objective evaluation of the music of the disco era for years. By now, it may be possible to view it more clearly. Disco gave us gold chains, white suits, and aerobics, but it also gave us authentically popular music that thrives, in evolved form, today.
Dance music has been the beat at the heart of rock 'n' roll from the late '40s jump bands to the techno '90s. And the dance-pop of the '80s, quickened by a disco-inspired coalition of black American funkateers and white British scenesters, has become arguably the most fully integrated, universal pop style ever.
As with any musical form, there were a lot of great disco records and a lot of lousy ones.
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