Point of No Return Part 2

Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia

Slate Podcasts

Music, Music History, Music Commentary

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 July 2022

⏱️ 49 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	Try to get across that slice it just wider the post.
0:05.0	Have they done enough?
0:07.0	Can they pull it out the back?
0:09.0	Does the ref have a clue?
0:11.0	When you're shouting at the screen, blow your whistle!
0:16.0	There's no feeling like live TV.
0:19.0	However you watch, a TV licence is your must-have pass to over 400 live TV channels
0:25.0	and it also funds the BBC, such TV licence.
0:31.0	Psst.
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0:39.0	Saving you cash and carbon while you sleep.
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0:51.0	Based on using a 7kW home charger and EDF's Go Electric overnight tariff,
0:56.0	at £8kWh off-peak.
1:16.0	Welcome back to Hitbury, a podcast of pop chart history from Sleet magazine
1:22.0	about the hits from Coast to Coast.
1:24.0	I'm Chris Malanfing, Chart Analyst, Pop Critic,
1:27.0	and Writer of Slates Why is the Song No. 1 series on our last episode.
1:32.0	We broke down the history of post-disco dance music and the rise of freestyle,
1:39.0	a hybrid genre that blended rap style break beats, hectic synthesizers,
1:44.0	and florid lyrics about romantic longing.
1:48.0	By 1987, the music had gotten big enough that Billboard magazine created a so-called
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