I Feel Love
History never repeats
I tell myself before I go to sleep
"History Never Repeats"
Split Enz
They’re testifying online about "I Feel Love", the Donna Summer hit from 1977. So I decided to play it. And instantly realized this sounds just as modern today as it did when it was cut, that this is the sound filling the Sahara Tent at Coachella, making the little kids go wild while their parents stand still in front of stultified rock acts on the main stage.
Yup, we’ve got a white concert business and media marginalizing the exploding EDM scene, ignoring music that has a direct lineage to the hits of twenty five years ago.
Doing a little research, I found out that Bronski Beat covered "I Feel Love" in 1984, that everybody from the Red Hot Chili Peppers to Madonna to Blue Man Group have done the song.
In other words, the musicians know.
But too much of the audience did not.
If you were alive back then, you know the extent to which disco was demonized. The music wasn’t, and the audience was comprised of marginalized men who just didn’t count.
But now, all those dyed-in-the-wool rockers have rewritten the history book. They like this sound.
I certainly do.
So when you say you hate EDM, you’re just revealing your prejudices and ignorance. Sure, not all of it is good, then again, not all of disco was great either.
But "I Feel Love" survives. Hell, it was one of the main inspirations for the never to die "Blue Monday" by New Order.
Then again, "I Feel Love" went to number one in the UK, and stayed there for four weeks, in a country where everybody still listened to the big station. There was no disco sucks movement across the pond, hell, these were the people who picked up our dying blues scene and revitalized it in the sixties. And kept electronic music alive all these years.
Yes, EDM is nothing new in the UK and on the Continent.
So it’s time to get off your high horse and listen, and realize it’s not all mindless drivel. That electronic music is the opposite of what we’ve been selling for so many years. It’s not mass-produced cheese made by usual suspects more interested in bank accounts than music. Rather it’s peopled by limit testers who bond with their audience all in service to the beat, the groove, inspired to have a good time. You do remember fun, don’t you?
We didn’t see it coming.
But we should have.
Because it’s the exact same thing that happened thirty five years ago.
Like I said, Donna Summer doesn’t get enough credit. She and her compatriots, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte, invented this sound.
Tell me all about the innovation in the Foo Fighters…
P.S. Oh, don’t get your knickers in a twist, Dave Grohl did test limits with Nirvana, but the point is you can’t point to the innovation in rock because there is none. Whereas in EDM…
P.P.S. The EDM artists understand the new game, just read this post by Deadmau5:
