ITALO DISCO AND THE COUGH
“I think it would be stupid for us to try and tell people who are dancing in a discotheque about the problems of the world. That is the very thing they have come away to avoid” Giovanni Giorgio Moroder
Two booming coughs in Lombardy, northern Italy, emerged as symbols of so-called “neoliberalism”: its voluptuous inception in the early 1980s marked by an Italo Pop hit, and its noisy collapse in 2020. Lombardy, at the center of both of these moments, serves as a microcosm for the broader societal realignments that have taken place.
In 1984, a band from Bergamo infected Italy’s dance floors with a humorous tune (and accompanying video in the nascent video clip era) that merged artificial beats, cheap keyboards, and the sound of coughing. The Coughing Song/Disco Band by Scotch, i.e., Vincenzo and Fabio, resonated particularly strongly in Germany and Eastern Europe, as well as West-facing Yugoslavia, where I was living. The cough, usually associated with illness or discomfort, heard amidst the glossy, romanticist world of disco music, provided a subtle warning that, underneath the surface of economic liberalization and cultural exuberance, society had an underlying “sickness”. Promising progress and prosperity, liberalization of the market was beginning to show glitches at its very core, particularly in terms of rising inequality. The rhythmic coughing and military marching orders in The Coughing Song can thus be read as an early warning sign, a playful yet symbolic representation of the sick foundations upon which the new neoliberal order was being built.
As US disco faded in the late 1970s, Italo Disco came out as an escapist electronic pop subgenre in the 1980s, with cheerful tunes and pulsating basslines that provided entertainment and distraction from economic issues such as inflation and unemployment. On the other hand, it acted as the soundtrack to this seismic shift by expressing an urge for optimism, allowing people to feel happy and free in the midst of tremendous social transformation. In fact, since the late 1960s, Italy had faced political violence and terror during the “Years of Lead,” particularly in the 1970s, leading to corrupt politics in the next decade, and forcing young people to distance themselves from extremist ideologies to seek refuge in English pop music and discotheques.
The 1980s in Italy became a time of pleasure, luxury, and optimism, with economic growth switching from agriculture to industry and services, transforming the regional capital of Lombardy into a social and commercial metropolis. Fashion gurus and artists opened shops in Milan, which became the cultural heart of Italy, while “Made in Italy” emerged as a prominent brand, drawing international attention to Italian products and lifestyle in music and TV. Provoked by the decade’s superficial reception as an escapist paradise, filmmaker Alessandro Melazzini has called to rethink of Italy’s 1980s as filled with optimism, experimentation, and exceptional creativity. This was particularly true for Italo Disco, born in Italy (Sabrina, Radiorama, Baltimora, Gazebo, Savage, etc.) and coming to fruition in Germany through projects like Modern Talking, Bad Boys Blue, C.C. Catch, Sandra, and others. With its synthesized tones, snazzy melodies, and often odd English lyrics paired with futuristic videos, this style of music immediately caught the world’s attention. Catchy, low-tech sounds, tinny drums, and a simplistic yet captivating production, were the success formula for the genre.
However, it appears that Italo Disco’s obscure lyrics, a side decoration to the primary musical and dance vibe, were the main reason why this kind of music has mostly failed to make a substantial impact in the English-speaking world. Italo Disco was more of a provincial phenomenon, with Milan serving as its marketing engine, attracting importers, record shops, and labels while millions visited the Riviera to party to its beats. Influenced by Italy’s Cold War flirtation with both US capitalism and Russian socialism, the genre’s aesthetic imitated the Space Race and frequently employed “ghost singers” and producers, with models appearing on TV while professional singers provided the original vocals. It’s not a surprise that Italo Disco veterans are still extremely popular in the former Soviet Union and countries east of the erstwhile Iron Curtain.
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A very loud cough resounded 36 years after the iconic whooping intro of The Coughing Song/Disco Band in still prosperous but indebted Lombardy. The main scenography once again focused on Milan and Bergamo, the province’s two major cities. This time, instead of staged coughing on three hospital beds in a Milanese TV studio set, mixed with a seductive synth bassline, it was an overambitious but poorly performed simulation of a deadly pandemic. In January 2022, a TikTok-style parody of the Bergamo band’s greatest hit, with medics dancing wildly in hospital gear, went viral on YouTube during a vaccination campaign.
In Bergamo, the crisis was intensified by manipulation and fear-mongering, with a football match used as a catalyst for spreading panic. The narrative, featuring scenes of coffins and crematoria, was a dilettante performance that exploited death as a key motif. This approach not only amplified the hysteria and brainwashing but also exposed pathetic solidarity amid the chaos. As tens of thousands of disco “pilgrims” had once flocked to Rimini in search of summer entertainment, decades later, 40,000 Atalanta fans from Bergamo left for Milan to watch a football game against Valencia. The mayor of Bergamo announced that the match resulted in a significant increase in virus transmission among people that night. Using trained verbal techniques with an appropriate dose of pathos, he inadvertently disclosed how authorities at all levels readily embraced the propaganda script.
In this context, coughing took on a much more sinister meaning. No longer a playful gesture in an innocent pop song, it became a symbol of fear, contagion, and death, weaponized by media and public health campaigns as an alarming sound that demanded immediate action. But as in The Coughing Song/Disco Band, the 2020 anti-coughing campaign included strong elements of performance. Exaggerated depictions of people struggling to breathe or on ventilators were all over the media, whether in dramatic news broadcasts or contrived events of public health advertising.
The worldwide media and public health campaigns frequently included rehearsed elements of control and manipulation, such as dramatic visual warnings of the pandemic’s severity. The Guardian asked why Lombardy, Italy’s wealthiest region, suffered the worst virus impact, answering itself by citing factors like population density and pollution, while David A. Hughes noted that Austria, Italy, and Germany, once fascist states, led the most brutal push for “lockdowns of the unvaccinated.” According to the New York Times, Bergamo became one of the worst-hit locations in the Western world, with overloaded hospitals that became temporary morgues. Photos of crematoria and coffins in Bergamo sparked journalists throughout the world to focus more on horror aesthetics, replete with anonymous footage and images of “mass burials” and “overcrowded morgues”, than on analyzing the alleged health crisis.
The cough, for a short while a symbol of playfulness in a hilarious pop song, now appeared as the literal and figurative breathlessness of a civilization on the verge of collapse. Italo Disco symbolized the cultural evolution toward a more globalized, consumer-oriented society, marking a departure from the politically charged music of the 1970s and reflecting a new focus on personal pleasure and entertainment. The rise of this musical subgenre altered social behavior by popularizing dance culture and nightlife and resulted in the emphasis on leisure and socializing. It became a symbol of the 1980s’ changing lifestyle, supported by the rising reach of media and technology, including the popularity of music videos and the growth of radio and television channels that promoted new musical trends.
The 2020-2022 pandemic operation, however, impacted public behavior by enforcing social distancing and changes in daily routines, limiting social interaction and activities. It caused widespread economic disruption, leading to business closures and a transfer towards digital and remote solutions. Furthermore, it accelerated the (mis)use of digital media and technology, with increased reliance on streaming services, virtual events, and online communication. Instead of highlighting the role of technology in connecting people during periods of physical isolation, the pandemic psychodrama spawned a set of manipulative tools in the age of post-truth. Simulating a health disaster was employed in media and public discourse to represent dread, control, and coming societal upheavals throughout the early 2020s economic landscape.
Both cough scenarios were staged to allow the public to process and react to the economic and social developments of the moment. The legacy of 1980s Italo Disco and its sequel, Eurodance, combined with the declared pandemic of 2020 and other cheesy genres such as low-budget horror films, reveal a concerning trend in human subjugation.
These superficial entertainments and sensationalist tactics became social announcements. They diverted attention away from the deeper crisis of liberal democracy while also signaling the beginning of a new, state socialist economic era. Just as Italo Disco hid the economic challenges of the 1980s, the media’s focus on the “horror” of COVID-19 masked the structural failures of neoliberalism to push for state monopoly capitalism (once thought to have been overcome with the early 1990s transition to global markets in the socialist Eastern bloc), the collectivist mindset and “encouraging” slogans included. By prioritizing trivial and superficial content, these entertainments obscure critical issues and manipulate public attention, reinforcing a pattern of escapism and distraction from genuine social and political paradigm changes. Both “coughs”, from 1984 and 2020, marked significant tipping points: the first represented a hopeful relaxation after a decade of terrorism and economic hardship, while the second signaled the suspension of democratic norms in preparation for the controlled demolition of the neoliberal paradigm and the demise of “senile capitalism”.
Some would argue that these two instances demonstrate the cyclical nature of change and the importance of culture in molding our awareness of such transformations. Be that as it may, we are eagerly ready for a new symbolic cough to ignite a fresh wave of early 1980s-style optimism and the triumph of the life instinct over the WEF-driven necrophiliac “sustainability” nonsense.
The Book Review available at: COVID-19 and the Left. The Tyranny of Fear, eds. Elena Louisa Lange, Geoff Shullenberger. Abingdon-New York: Routledge, 2024.
The article was originally published in the magazine Café Américain.
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