Backlash

Disco reached a formal end-point during the second half of 1979 when the hostile "disco sucks" movement helped persuade record companies to abandon the generic label. Inspired by John Holmstrom's January 1976 "Death to Disco Shit!" editorial in Punk magazine, the anti-disco movement acquired momentum gradually during 1976 and 1977. In addition, the post-Saturday Night Fever proliferation of substandard disco records made disco increasingly vulnerable to attack. Finally, the concurrent onset of a deep recession in the first quarter of 1979 created a constituency of alienated young men searching for a scapegoat to blame for their lack of security. It was within this context that the backlash against disco peaked in the summer of 1979. When the talk host DJ Steve Dahl staged an explosion of approximately 40,000 disco records in the middle of a baseball doubleheader at Comiskey Park in Chicago, the movement reached its symbolic peak. During the next six months, U.S. record companies reduced their disco output radically, closed down disco departments, and started to use "dance" in place of "disco."