A dancing dozen as twelve top classic rock acts deliver their disco strut 

I’ve been writing about great songs with excellent basslines recently. It made me think about how that often added a disco or dance flavor to them. Even if that wasn’t the natural style or genre of the artist. 

Sometimes it's quite a step change for an artist to a different style altogether. Especially where it was say a new wave, punk, or classic rock band. This made me think about songs where a band had made that transition, away from their core style to pick up the disco beat and dance the night away.

I’ve been looking more closely at rock acts that made that step. There are plenty of that have, but I got quickly frustrated when I saw some examples that were mentioned by others. They included songs from Abba and Electric Light Orchestra among others. We could spend a while debating what makes a rock act but Abba with “Dancing Queen” and many of their other top pop songs were hardly hiding their sequins and glitter.

Twelve classic rock acts add a disco twist

To avoid any confusion let's keep it simple with this list of 12 undeniably classic rock artists or bands. Each had at least one, probably more disco-style song which was a digression from their normal core style of music. The songs were all pretty good too, whether you like a disco boogie or not. 

David Bowie

The first of the twelve is David Bowie. He's covered a variety of styles and created new personas at times. Perhaps his first dip into the world of the glitterball was back in 1974 on his Diamond Dogs album. “1984” has a definite disco beat and sound to it.

The song is fast and funky and different from the glam rock and proto-punk style of his previous hit albums.  Bowie went on to release more disco-based songs at times, “Young Americans” a year later for example.  He returned to the genre with his 1983 Let's Dance album and title song. 

Queen

The band's 1982 album Hot Space took the rock background of Queen further in an unusual for their direction. Electronic, dance, and disco poured out of the album. “Body Language” and “Under Pressure” are a couple of examples from that disc. 

While that may have seemed a strange turn to take, it followed one of their biggest hits and a huge disco favorite. 1980 saw “Another One Bites The Dust” released as a single from The Game. A worldwide success with number one in many countries, US and UK included. Disco certainly paid off on that song for Queen.

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