Point of No Return Part 1

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 16 July 2022

⏱️ 62 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Jonathan Braylock, I'm Dra. Milligan, and I'm James III. And we're those of Black
0:09.2	MacGene Jump in Hollywood. It's a comedic podcast that reviews films with leading actors
0:13.6	of color and analyze them in the context of race and Hollywood's diversity issues.
0:17.7	Yeah. Listen to new episodes on Mondays. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. I don't
0:22.7	care where you get them. I just want you to listen. Don't threaten the people we need
0:26.9	them to listen. Okay. Okay. Okay. Sorry, guys. Listen. Listen to us. Yeah. Yeah. Put
0:32.1	on a happy voice. Hey there, hit parade listeners. What you're about to hear is part
0:44.5	one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month.
0:50.7	And you like to hear this episode all at once. The day it drops, sign up for sleep plus.
0:57.1	It supports not only this show, but all of sleets acclaimed journalism and podcasts.
1:03.7	Just go to sleep.com slash hit parade plus you'll get to hear every hit parade episode
1:10.4	in full. The day it arrives plus hit parade. The bridge are bonus episodes with guest interviews
1:18.2	deeper dives on our episode topics and pop chart trivia. Once again, to join that's
1:25.0	slate.com slash hit parade plus thanks. And now please enjoy part one of this hit parade
1:32.9	episode. Welcome to hip parade, a podcast of pop chart history from
1:47.4	Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanthe, chart analyst,
1:53.5	pop critic and writer of Slates. Why is this song number one series on today's show 35 years
2:01.0	ago this month in July of 1987. The hot 100 was a wash in pulsating synthesizers and
2:10.0	pinging rhythms. In the early 80s, you might have expected these electronic musical tools
2:17.6	to be wielded by such MTV synth pop gods as Durand ran or prints. But in the second half
2:26.5	of that decade, they were most effectively deployed by acts crossing over from the worlds
2:33.2	of urban club music, hip hop and especially Latin dance led by Miami girl group trio
	...

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