Italian Disco vs Italo Disco

How to make a distinction between two music genres that are often and mistakely classified together.

Around 1985, I found myself performing live all over Puglia. Some were song contests, some were appearances on local TV stations, such as Telebari or Telepuglia. People would catch my performances and invite me to sing live at political rallies, carnivals, and fairs, where I’d serve as the opening act for established Italian singers such as Bobby Solo and Marcella and Gianni Bella. 

That same year, I also started opening for italo disco acts as well, such as Novecento and the artist known as Den Harrow, who claimed he was from Boston but was born and raised in Nova Milanese. Harrow was at the peak of his popularity, with singles such as “Future Brain,” from the album Overpower. This sent me down the rabbit hole of the back catalogue of Baby Records, which had become a continent-wide leading label as it specialized in Italian pop and Schlager crossover alongside italo disco. 

Mind you, this was not my first experience with the sound that would then be known as italo disco: two years prior, my older brother let me listen to Vivien Vee’s “Higher,” which combines Bach-like fugue sounds, propulsive drums, futuristic synths and Vee’s crystalline vocals. The track was the right amount of experimental, and actually paved the way to sounds and stylistic conventions that would become the cornerstones of peak italo disco. 

So what exactly do we mean by italo disco? 

People mistakenly classify all Italian-made disco productions as “italo disco”. There’s Italian disco in the 1970s that is clearly inspired by American funk and soul productions, the experimental “proto” italo disco from the early 80s, and then the “peak”, hyper-commercial italo disco from the mid-80s onward.  

It’s easy to see the confusion. “It doesn’t seem that italo disco was ever established in Italian linguistic practice outside the community of professionals (record producers, DJs, performers) who had an interest in marketing their products abroad; and even in that community, the genre was often named la dance italiana (Italian dance music),” write Franco Fabbri and Goffredo Plastino in Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music. 

The taxonomy came from abroad. It was the founder of the German label ZYX Bernhard Mikulski allegedly coined the expression italo disco for purely geographical reasons, as he used it to refer to a type of disco music coming from Italy. As a result, soul tracks like “Nessuno Mai” by Marcella Bella, “One for You, One for Me” by La Bionda, “Self Control”  by Raf, and “Tarzan Boy” by Baltimora would all fall into the italo disco bucket. Not all Italian-made disco productions are italo disco, but all italo disco hits are, indeed, made in Italy or have strong ties to the country.

Nessuno Mai by Marcella Bella is one of the first Italian pop-disco tracks produced in Italy in 1974

 “The genre that would then be labeled italo disco was peculiar in that it created a bridge between two very distant genres, namely disco and prog rock, who found common ground thanks to the Moog synthesizer,” wrote  Andrea Angelo Bufalini in his book La storia della Disco Music, one of the few Italian reference books on the genre. “Italo disco served as a vehicle of promotion for a few Italian soubrettes of rather dubious talent, including Alba Parietti, Angela Cavagna, Nadia Cassini, and most of all Sabrina Salerno (of “Boys” fame),” wrote Dario Martinelli in Made in Italy: Studies in Popular Music.  “All these cases were/are approximate variants of the Sophia Loren type, and therefore contributed to the international establishment of the Italian beauty as a sexy, all-curves, fleshy-lips brunette.”

Variety showgirl Nadia Cassini, is one of the many to bring disco culture on the TV screen at the end of the 70s

Early Italian disco-adjacent records combined the standard Philadelphia sound with Italian lyrics: strings, 4/4 beat, drums, and soaring Italian vocals. While disco music exploded in popularity in Italy thanks to the movie Saturday Night Live, which spawned several copycats in Italy alone, early examples of proto-disco music appeared as early as 1974, with Marcella Bella’s “Negro” and “Nessuno Mai,” and with Carrà’s “Rumore.”

In 1977, DD Sound (an alias of La Bionda) released “Disco Bass” and “Burning Love” and in 1979, Gepy and Gepy had “Body to Body.” DD Sound was also the first Italian act to rank in Billboard’s Top 25 disco chart, which happened on July 16, 1977 with the single Burning Love/ Shopping Baby. 

The late 1970s also saw traditional Italian songs rearranged to the disco beat, a juxtaposition that showcases how soaring vocal tracks can pair extremely well with dance floor-friendly rhythms. Take Marcella Bella’s rendition of Domenico Modugno’s “Resta Cu’mme,” which she performed in 1976, Grace Jones’s disco-inflected “Anema e Core,” as seen on the revolutionary show “Stryx” in 1978, and Tony Renis’ 1978 “Disco Quando,” 

By the late 1970s, we saw experiments with synths coming from continental Europe, especially Germany. Literature on how Moroder and Summer’s “I Feel Love” became a watershed moment in music abounds, and its effects certainly reverberated in Italy as well.  

Important players in these initial phases are the music act La Bionda Brothers, the producer Freddy Naggiar, and the composer Claudio Simonetti. 

Claudio Simonetti, was a keyboardist and songwriter who is best known for the soundtrack work he did for Dario Argento, especially Profondo Rosso. He met the dj/musician Paolo Micioni at the Easy Going club in Rome, and, together with his brother Pete and producer Giancarlo Meo, he founded the eponymous band. Their debut happened in 1978, with the leading single “Baby I Love You,” the first example of porto-Italo disco without direct influence of the Munich sound. 

The La Bionda Brothers, who published both under their own name and with the alias DD Sound, and who had already made a name for themselves as songwriters, composers, and producers for the likes of Ornella Vanoni, Mia Martini, and Amanda Lear, were sent to Munich in 1975 to learn all about its signature sound. The idea came from Federico “Freddy” Naggiar, founder of the label Baby Records, which ended up embodying whatever we mean by “Italian Sound” by the 1980s—thanks to Baby, we have “Sarà Perché Ti Amo,” “Felicità,” and other unforgettable earworms. “Naggiar intuits that the most important vehicle for the distribution of his productions lies in TV, especially in RAI’s monopoly,” writes producer and composer Raff Todesco in the book Italo Disco. “So he goes all in: he has his talent perform opening numbers, has them feature in guest appearances, and so on: Baby Records is everywhere.”

And while their earlier numbers “Burning Love,” “One For You, One For Me,” and “Disco Bass” still retained some soul and funk elements, their “1, 2, 3, 4 Gimme Some More” had some blatant continental influences, including the markedly Schlageresque, oom-pah bass line. Their 1979 single “High Energy” fully exploits synth and electronic sounds, while “Hootchie Cootchie,” released the same year, makes synths and soul-like sounds perfectly coexist. In 1980, their single “I Wanna Be Your Lover” fully yeeted them into space—literally so. 

The song was accompanied by a fully animated music video, which sees a cosmic siren drone the refrain “I wanna be your lover,” while the two astronaut brothers sing the verse.

The La Bionda brothers decided, by 1982, to largely work behind the scenes as producers and arrangers, and one of their early acquisitions was the Righeira brothers, who were actually just a couple of friends, Stefano Rota and Stefano Righi. For them, La Bionda produced “Vamos A La Playa,” which sold 3 million copies, and the equally successful “No Tengo Dinero.” Apparently, La Bionda first pitched them directly to Naggiar, but he had turned them down. 

This concludes Part 1 of the “Italo Disco” series. The next installments will examine Peak Italo Disco, Discomagic Records, and Baby Records. If there’s a performer or subgenre you want covered, leave a comment.

In the meantime we have prepared a Spotify Playlist Italian Disco vs Italo Disco that brings together 10 years of disco music made in Italy, from 1975 to 1985 so you can take a journey through time and experience the evolution of these genres. Let us know your thoughts and if there is a one or more tracks you like in particular.