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Sign upVideos, fashion, cinema, sleeves, TV - Italo Disco as part of the era.
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January 1984: Van Halen with an Oberheim OB-Xa synth - alien to hard rock. David Lee Roth and the band hated it; Eddie insisted. #1 Billboard for 5 weeks - the band's only #1. 5150 Studios, producer Templeman. Roth shot the $600 video himself. Album: 10M US copies. Roth quit nine months later.
October 1987: the 24-year-old George Michael writes, produces and performs his solo debut alone. Title single #1 Billboard for 4 weeks, album 25M copies, 12 weeks at #1. Grammy Album of the Year 1988 - a first for solo pop. Gibson J-200 12-string and TR-909.
February 1982: David Paich writes “Africa” on a Yamaha CS-80 after a PBS doc. No Toto member had been to Africa. #1 Billboard 1983, 11 vocal tracks on the chorus, 2.3B streams after the Reddit revival.
May 1985: Swiss duo Yello (Meier+Blank) drop “Oh Yeah” on Stella. #51 Billboard - not a hit. 1986: editor Paul Hirsch slots 3 seconds over a Ferris Bueller scene, John Hughes greenlights it in 5 seconds. Since then - 200+ films, $40M in licensing. Yello have never played a live show.
3 August 1983: Prince and The Revolution play a charity show at First Avenue. 24-track recording; the live “Purple Rain” runs 13:45. In October at Sunset Sound, Prince adds 24 strings and trims it to 8:41. Originally written as a duet with Stevie Nicks, who passed. Album 13M US copies.
October 1981: a modest #9 Billboard at release. 10 June 2007: HBO puts it in the Sopranos finale, then cuts to black. The song re-enters the iTunes top-10 after 26 years. By 2024 - 4.7B streams, the best-selling rock song of the digital era. The chorus arrives at 3:22.
Summer 1983: 8 weeks at Billboard #1. Sting wrote the lyric in 5 minutes at 3am in Ian Fleming's former Goldeneye house in Jamaica, after his divorce - it's a stalking song, not a love song. Cut at AIR Montserrat with Hugh Padgham, 20M+ copies, 1984 Song of the Year Grammy.
July 1984: 21-year-old George Michael wrote “Careless Whisper” aged 17 at a bus stop. Five studios, three years, $250,000 budget. Steve Gregory's sax solo on the 10th take for £350 with no royalties. #1 UK and Billboard, 6M copies.
February 1983: the third Thriller single. Billboard #1 for 3 weeks. Eddie Van Halen's solo cut in 30 minutes for free - two takes for a beer. Bob Giraldi's $150,000 video with 80 real Crips and Bloods.
May 1982: Survivor write the Rocky III theme in four days, commissioned by Stallone. He had wanted Queen's “Another One Bites the Dust” - Queen pulled out. Five days at Rumbo Recorders, $28,000 budget. #1 Billboard for 6 weeks, 1983 Grammy, 1.2B streams.
January 1983: the second Thriller single. 7 weeks #1 Billboard. Quincy Jones wanted to cut the 29-second intro - Jackson refused. 91 vocal takes, Steve Barron's $250K video broke MTV's “no-Black” wall.
April 1986: Gabriel knocks Genesis - his own old band - off Billboard #1. Aardman Animations' stop-motion video - 7,450 frames, 16 weeks of filming, 80 hours of Gabriel under glass. Nine 1987 MTV Video Awards (still unbeaten). Kurzweil 250 with shakuhachi, Fairlight CMI, Rick Astley on backing vocals. 5M copies.
September 1979: Trevor Horn and Geoffrey Downes record The Buggles' debut at Sarm East for £18,000. Two months later - #1 in 16 countries, 5.5M copies. Two years later Russell Mulcahy's clip becomes the first ever video aired by MTV - the symbolic start of the era. Jupiter-4, Debbie Harry on backing vocals.
Where you can run into Italo Disco - from kids' cartoons to video game soundtracks and space missions, the genre's unusual appearances in mass culture.
How the genre and Italian cinema shaped each other - from '80s films built on Italo Disco hits to retro pictures today that use the classic tracks.
How the Italian genre was received outside Italy - from adoration in Eastern Europe to the snobbery of the British press and a Japanese cult.
A survey of the main retro festivals and regular parties dedicated to Italo Disco - where the genre's fans gather across Europe.
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