Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia - Point of No Return Part 1
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3.9 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2022
⏱️ 59 minutes
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Summary
After the so-called-but-not-really “death” of disco, dance music in the 1980s moved to its own beat. There was synthpop, electro, hi-NRG and house. But the scrappy genre that seemed to pull it all together was called freestyle—a breakbeat-tempo, Latin-flavored genre fortified with dizzying, proudly synthetic beats. Freestyle grew out of the clubs and streets of New York and Miami and briefly dominated ’80s dance-pop.
Freestyle’s flagship artists were only medium-level stars: Shannon. Exposé. Lisa Lisa. Stevie B. Nu Shooz. Sweet Sensation. But these acts—most especially their yearning, floridly romantic, rhythmically hectic songs—punched above their weight on the charts and even affected the hits of superstars from Madonna to Duran Duran, Whitney Houston to Pet Shop Boys.
Join Chris Molanphy as he defines the byways of this bespoke dance genre and traces how it bridged the disco era into the hiphop era.
Podcast production by Kevin Bendis.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening Ad Free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:03.7 | Hey there, hit parade listeners. |
| 0:06.3 | What you're about to hear is part one of this episode. |
| 0:10.0 | Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. |
| 0:14.2 | Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? |
| 0:18.5 | Sign up for Slate Plus. |
| 0:20.2 | It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's |
| 0:24.2 | acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com slash hit parade plus. You'll get to hear |
| 0:32.2 | every hit parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus, Hit Parade The Bridge are bonus episodes, |
| 0:40.1 | with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again, |
| 0:47.4 | to join, that's slate.com slash hit parade plus. Thanks. And now, please enjoy part one of this Hit Parade episode. |
| 1:02.3 | Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine about the hits from |
| 1:13.5 | coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanthe, chart analyst, pop critic, and writer of Slate's Why is |
| 1:19.7 | this song number one series. On today's show, 35 years ago, this month in July of 1987, the Hot 100 was awash in pulsating synthesizers |
| 1:33.0 | and pinging rhythms. |
| 1:35.4 | In the early 80s, you might have expected these electronic musical tools to be wielded |
| 1:42.2 | by such MTV synth-pop gods as Duran Duran or Prince. |
| 1:48.4 | But in the second half of that decade, they were most effectively deployed by acts |
| 1:54.6 | crossing over from the worlds of urban club music, hip-hop, and especially Latin dance, led by Miami Girl Group Trio Exposé. |
| 2:11.6 | Exposé were in the top five that summer with point of no return, but they were not alone. |
| 2:21.8 | A cornycopia of similar acts, many female lead, were all over the Hot 100. |
| 2:29.6 | Their angular beats and yearning vocals formed a new subgenre identified by DJs and club |
... |
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