During disco’s heyday, as Michaelangelo Matos points out in his short, sharp We Won’t Settle for Less: Chic at the End of Disco, the music was everywhere, especially the past. As nostalgia took hold in the Happy Days-era of the 1970s, music was similarly looking back. From our modern vantage point, disco might seem like a sharp break from the popular music that came before it, but bands like Chic were making a clear connection between themselves and the Roaring ’20s with songs like “Le Freak” (“stomping at the Savoy”) and “Good Times,” which referenced Al Jolson songs and felt like a Depression-era “Happy Days Are Here Again”-type song.
Read Full Article »
