Given a bad name twice over, Italo Disco has assumed its place in pop music history, to some degree defining the first half of the ’80s for mainland Europeans. It typically describes producer-driven dance music that makes excessive use of synthesizer keyboards, is powered by drum machine percussion and known for its peculiar interpretations of pop song conventions. The term was never as current in the music’s place of origin as it was outside of Italy. A branding actually devised by German distributor ZYX Records in ’83 for marketing purposes, Italo Disco is not the same as Italian disco music from the ’70s, neither does it have to be made in Italy or in the 1980s. ![]() An avid adopter of American music since his beginnings as a recording artist in the late ’50s, Celentano, a great communicator, intended the imaginary language as a statement on our inability to communicate, but clearly “Prisencolinensinainciusol” – sometimes among the rap-before-rap-existed tunes people like to pull out of the hat – and its meaningless vocals still speak volumes of the (physical and cultural) American presence in Italy.Įnter Italo Disco. Then in 1972 jack-of-all-trades Adriano Celentano unveiled the nonsensical “Prisencolinensinainciusol”, in which he assumes a mock American English. Never mind that the tune was itself indebted to one of the first styles of American popular music – swing – to be successfully exported (and quickly imitated), “Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano” (‘You’re a Wannabe American’) is a vivid caricature not just of post-war Italy but many other places where American popular culture proliferated at one point or another. ![]() In 1956 Neapolitan singer Renato Carosone recorded the satirical song “Tu Vuò Fà L’Americano”, which poked fun at locals who mimic the American lifestyle. Let us begin with two songs that are not part of our presentation but are fit to set the stage.
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