Italo disco is a very broad term, encompassing much of the dance music output in Europe during the 1980s. It is one of the world's first forms of completely electronic dance music and evolved during the late 1970s and early 1980s in Italy, Germany, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe.
Italo disco music has a distinct, futuristic and spacey sound, which was created using synthesizers, drum machines and vocoders. The term "Italo disco" was marketed only in Europe in the early 1980s by the German record label ZYX Music.
The entry of synthesizers and other electronic effects into the disco genre produced electronic dance music, including America's Hi-NRG and Europe's space disco. Dancers and listeners experienced something new because the artists' use of new music-shaping technologies created the perception of being in a very large space and because of the discothèques' lighting displays. Italo disco's influences were Italian producer Giorgio Moroder, French musician Didier Marouani, a couple of hits by the French drummer Cerrone, electropop (Kraftwerk, Telex, Devo and Gary Numan), and the early Hi-NRG albums of San Francisco producer Patrick Cowley with such singers as Sylvester and Paul Parker.
By 1980, Italo appeared as a fully developed form in Italy and other parts of Europe. Songs were sometimes completely electronic and featured drum machines, catchy melodies, vocoders, overdubs, love-song lyrics sung in English often with heavy foreign accents, and, occasionally, nonsensical lyrics (due to artists' poor command of the English language). To predominantly non-English-speaking audiences and artists, the voice was considered an additional musical instrument, rather than something meant to deliver a message. Along with love, Italo disco themes deal with robots and space, sometimes combining all three in songs including "Robot Is Systematic" (1982) by 'Lectric Workers and "Spacer Woman" (1983) by Charlie. Italo disco was widely played on radio stations and in discothèques in Europe, but in the English-speaking world, it was mostly an underground phenomenon that could be heard at nightclubs.
1982 and 1983 saw the releases of the irony-laden "Dirty Talk", "Wonderful" and "The M.B.O. Theme", three tracks cited as influential in the development of house, by Klein & M.B.O., a side-project developed by Davide Piatto of the Italo disco duo N.O.I.A., with vocals by Piatto and Rossana Casale.
Many see 1983 as the height of Italo, with frequent hit singles and many labels starting up around this time. Such labels included American Disco, Crash, Merak, Sensation and X-Energy. The popular label Disco Magic released more than thirty singles within the year. It was also the year that the term "Italo disco" was reputedly coined by Bernhard Mikulski, the founder of ZYX Music (Germany), when ZYX released their first volume of The Best of Italo Disco series.
During the late 1980s Italo faded and was replaced by Italo NRG (a.k.a Italo House) which combined high-paced Italo and house.
Canada, particularly Quebec, produced several remarkable Italo disco acts, including Trans X ("Living on Video"), Lime ("Angel Eyes"), Pluton & the Humanoids ("World Invaders"), Purple Flash Orchestra ("We Can Make It"), Tapps ("Forbidden Lover"), etc. Those productions were called "Canadian disco" during 1980–1984 in Europe and Hi-NRG disco in the U.S.
In Germany, where the name "Italo disco" was originally coined and then marketed by ZYX Records in 1983, many other genre names were used to describe it as well. Euro Disco, Discofox were common in Europe, while in the English speaking countries, the actual language of most Italo Disco songs, it was still called Italo disco and HiNRG. German productions were also exclusively in English and were characterized by an emphasis on melody, exaggerated overproduction, and a more earnest approach to the themes of love; examples may be found in the works of Modern Talking, Fancy, American-born singer and Fancy protégé Grant Miller, Bad Boys Blue, Joy, Lian Ross, C. C. Catch, etc.
Also during the mid-1980s spacesynth developed, mostly as a sub-genre of italo. This style is the crossover of Italo disco and space disco and it was mostly instrumental, with a focus on space sounds than the earlier pop-oriented songs, as exemplified by the sounds of Koto, Proxyon, Rofo, Cyber People, Hipnosis and Laserdance.
