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| If you know the actors, you know the genre. |
The Hit
Even people who haven’t seen Love at First Bite, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Last Days of Disco (strong recommend on the latter) have a 90% or better chance of knowing Alicia Bridges’ 1978 mega-hit “I Love the Nightlife (Disco ‘Round).” Now, for the things 90% of people don’t know…
For one, while Bridges and her songwriting and then-personal partner Susan Hutcheson made a conscious choice to write a song with the word “disco” in it, they did not did not sit down to write a disco hit. According to her Wikipedia entry, Bridges/Hutcheson had hoped to shape it into a Memphis Soul tune, while the producer of her debut album, Steve Buckingham, pushed for an R&B sound as well as suggesting she go with “I Love the Nightlife” for the title instead of the original “Disco ‘Round”; the decision to go full-disco came from her benefactor (with emphasis on “bene,” i.e., good), Bill Lowery, while the work of crafting the hit fell to a disco producer/DJ named Jim Burgess (who delivered other hits like The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” and KISS’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.”
Lowery guided the Bridges’ hit to its final version in other ways: Bridges/Hutcheson’s first draft had the song’s narrator making up with the man in the second verse, but, as Bridges shared with a site called Queer Music Heritage in 2008, Lowery pushed against that (“no, don’t make up with this joker”), while pushing for the specific line “make a man out of you.” A second-hand quote from Bridges posted in a Songfacts blurb undoes the rest of the origin story:
“That wasn't cut at all with disco in mind. Disco was just where I was gonna go after I'd told this man to leave me alone, it wasn't meant to be the theme of the song. We do love the nightlife in the sense that we love to be awake at night when its quiet and we can do some bizarre and productive thinking. But actually I don't care for discos at all.”
The song turned into a disco anthem, of course, if not one of the great disco anthems of all time. It peaked at No. 5, but parked in the Hot 100 for 27 weeks (over half a year, for those counting at home). The eponymous LP hung on even longer (35 weeks) and, in something you couldn't see coming, but for the times, the single crossed-over as a hit on the country charts as well.
Even people who haven’t seen Love at First Bite, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and The Last Days of Disco (strong recommend on the latter) have a 90% or better chance of knowing Alicia Bridges’ 1978 mega-hit “I Love the Nightlife (Disco ‘Round).” Now, for the things 90% of people don’t know…
For one, while Bridges and her songwriting and then-personal partner Susan Hutcheson made a conscious choice to write a song with the word “disco” in it, they did not did not sit down to write a disco hit. According to her Wikipedia entry, Bridges/Hutcheson had hoped to shape it into a Memphis Soul tune, while the producer of her debut album, Steve Buckingham, pushed for an R&B sound as well as suggesting she go with “I Love the Nightlife” for the title instead of the original “Disco ‘Round”; the decision to go full-disco came from her benefactor (with emphasis on “bene,” i.e., good), Bill Lowery, while the work of crafting the hit fell to a disco producer/DJ named Jim Burgess (who delivered other hits like The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” and KISS’s “I Was Made for Lovin’ You.”
Lowery guided the Bridges’ hit to its final version in other ways: Bridges/Hutcheson’s first draft had the song’s narrator making up with the man in the second verse, but, as Bridges shared with a site called Queer Music Heritage in 2008, Lowery pushed against that (“no, don’t make up with this joker”), while pushing for the specific line “make a man out of you.” A second-hand quote from Bridges posted in a Songfacts blurb undoes the rest of the origin story:
“That wasn't cut at all with disco in mind. Disco was just where I was gonna go after I'd told this man to leave me alone, it wasn't meant to be the theme of the song. We do love the nightlife in the sense that we love to be awake at night when its quiet and we can do some bizarre and productive thinking. But actually I don't care for discos at all.”
The song turned into a disco anthem, of course, if not one of the great disco anthems of all time. It peaked at No. 5, but parked in the Hot 100 for 27 weeks (over half a year, for those counting at home). The eponymous LP hung on even longer (35 weeks) and, in something you couldn't see coming, but for the times, the single crossed-over as a hit on the country charts as well.
