Best Disco Songs of All Time
25 essential disco songs of all time — from Donna Summer and Chic through Gloria Gaynor and the Bee Gees, each linked to the album. Disco emerged in the early-to-mid 70s from New York's Black, Latino and gay club culture before exploding into the biggest mainstream pop movement of the decade, then collapsing almost as fast under a well-documented backlash before its rhythmic DNA quietly resurfaced inside house music, hip-hop and modern pop production. The songs here span both halves of that story — the club-born originals and the string-laden pop crossovers that made disco, briefly, the dominant sound in the world.
Reviewed by Callum Ashworth, 247 Album Verdict · Last updated · How we rank
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1CH
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2CH
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3DS
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4DS
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5SS
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6DR
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7DR
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8EW
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9GJ
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10MJ
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11BJ
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12SS
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13DS
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14GG
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15CH
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16SS
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17BG
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18K&
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19DR
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20SY
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21TR
Tap the artwork or "Listen" to find the track on Amazon Music; "Watch" opens a YouTube search; the song title or "Album" opens its album page. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases and sign-ups.
What actually killed disco?
There wasn't one single cause, but a well-documented backlash culminated in the "Disco Demolition Night" promotion at a Chicago baseball game in 1979, where records were blown up between innings — a widely cited symbolic moment for a broader cultural and radio-format shift away from the genre, which had oversaturated the charts by the late 1970s.
Is disco the same as dance music?
Disco is a specific genre with its own sound — four-on-the-floor drums, string sections, syncopated basslines — that emerged in the early-to-mid 1970s. It's a direct ancestor of house and modern dance music, but the two aren't interchangeable; disco has a distinct instrumental and production signature tied to its era.
Why do so many disco songs sample or get sampled today?
Disco's rhythmic basslines and string arrangements have proven enormously useful to producers across house, hip-hop and pop for decades since, partly because the genre's productions were unusually rich and orchestral for dance music of any era, giving samplers a lot of usable musical material to draw from.
Was disco mainly a US phenomenon?
It started in New York's Black, Latino and gay club scenes before becoming a global phenomenon, particularly via European producers and labels who put their own stamp on the sound — Italian and German disco production in particular became hugely influential on the genre's international spread.