I was thinking about the bleak tone of Saturday Night Fever, where the disco serves as Tony Mareno’s only bulwark against utter hopelessness, and these songs came to mind: ecstasy twisted out of despair, their relentless beats fighting against the hopelessness of the worlds described in their lyrics.
The Jam “A Town Called Malice”
Paul Weller captures perfectly life in a bleak Northern English town, finding pathos (“A hundred lonely housewives clutching milk bottles to their hearts”) and shattered dreams (“A whole street’s belief in Sunday’s roast beef / Gets dashed against the co-op”) in the details. And yet the beat goes on.
Outkast “Hey Ya!”
The still-warm embers of a relationship in its death throes (“Got it just don’t get it / Till there’s nothing at all”), neither party willing to admit what both know (“Why are we so in denial / When we know we’re not happy here?”). Sometimes the truth is too painful to face. Sometimes you need obliteration and oblivion. Postpone those thoughts, postpone the feelings, don’t try to fight the feeling. Shake it like a Polaroid picture.
Thelma Houston “Don’t Leave Me This Way”
Ah, disco, an entire genre with strong associations with gay culture, and therefore with defiance in the face of oppression. Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes’ original version is pleading soul; in Houston’s disco cover, the chorus booms in with all that desire in her whispery verses exploding into a glorious rush of pure energy while the relentless bassline loops on.