Disco: Music, Movies, and Mania under the Mirror Ball

This dazzling volume shines new light on the songs, styles, and enduring pop culture impact of the 1970s musical genre that emerged from Black and Latin queer culture to take the world by storm.

Half a century after the drug-fueled, DJ-driven, glamour-drenched musical phenomenon of disco was born at a New York City loft party, disco’s musical and fashion influences live on in popular culture. 

This is a frolicking, entertaining, yet serious tribute to the overlooked art form of disco, which has never been given its proper due, nor taken its true place in the historic struggle for LGBTQ+, gender, and racial equality. 

Painting a vivid portrait of this provocative era, DeCaro explores the cultural importance of disco and how the music and dance that originated in queer Black and Latin clubs of the day became a mainstream phenomenon, changing our culture along the way. 

With glamorous photos from disco’s heyday up through today, DeCaro examines disco’s pervasive influence on pop culture over the last fifty years—exploring disco in film and television as well as in fashion and interior design. 

Through entertaining texts—as well as interviews with artists and celebrities of the era, such as Donna Summer and Grace Jones, among others—this book champions the diverse origins of disco while celebrating its influence on today’s groundbreaking artists such as Lady Gaga, Duo Lipa, and Miley Cyrus. A must for all lovers of music, style, and pop culture.

About the Author :
Frank DeCaro’s work has appeared in myriad publications including the New York Times Magazine, Martha Stewart Living, Entertainment Weekly, Newsweek, Vogue, and the Advocate. He is also the author of Rizzoli’s Drag: Combing Through the Big Wigs of Show Business.

Review :
"The book is not merely a celebration of the music itself, but of the larger cultural movement disco represented." — MINDED PODCAST

"DeCaro paints a dazzling portrait of disco’s journey from underground clubs to mainstream global phenomenon, profoundly altering pop culture. This volume is rich with glamorous photographs spanning from disco’s zenith to the present and explores its influence across film, television, fashion, and design." — INDULGE

"Decaro traces the rise of disco from a New York City loft party to a global phenomenon with spellbinding photos and interviews with the likes of Grace Jones and Donna Summer." — NEW YORK POST

"This gorgeous, oversize, hard-bound book with its prismatic cover featuring a scantily clad Disco Queen is bursting its cover with tons of photos and text including first-hand accounts and experiences." — BOYCE MCCLAIN COLLECTOR'S CORNER

"Disco provides both a look into the past, through archival photographs and interviews with luminaries like Donna Summer, and an analysis of the genre’s influence on pop culture over the decades." — THEM

"Author DeCaro dishes details on "Can't Stop the Music" and other disco kitsch in his photo-packed book, which includes a simultaneously appalling and irresistible chapter on disco's infiltration of network TV." — BAY AREA REPORTER

"Through vivid imagery, interview, and more, this explores how this era has impacted the last 50 years and how it has been seen in films, TV, fashion, and interior design." — ATHLEISURE MAG ONLINE

"If the soundtrack of your ideal holiday party evokes silver balls and the Hustle more than silver bells and tinsel, share that hopped up Yuletide vibe with loved ones by giving them Frank DeCaro’s throwback opus, Disco: Music, Movies and Mania under the Mirror Ball. DeCaro, the pop culture maven whose prior books include the classic Gen X queer memoir A Boy Named Phyllis and who spent six years reading film for filth as a dishy critic on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, spins the splendid story of disco’s emergence from New York’s gay, black, and Latino communities into a multimedia juggernaut that dominated the 1970s and paved the way for EDM and much of today’s popular music. An inveterate packrat, both in his home and his head, DeCaro lays out a fabulous hoard of anecdotes, vintage interviews, and visual ephemera from the disco era in this coffee table tome. Among the book’s trivial treasures: A detailed catalog of disco-themed special episodes of network television series, from Barnaby Jones and Wonder Woman to What’s Happenin’? and The Brady Bunch Variety Hour; conversations with Grace Jones, Donna Summer, and Thelma Houston; and a behind-the-scenes chronicle of the movie that helped unmake disco’s dominance: Can’t Stop the Music, which starred The Village People and the era’s most beloved Olympian, a fellow by the name of Bruce Jenner. Full of fond memories for older readers and kitschtastic discoveries for younger ones, this is one of the year’s greatest gay gift books." — PASSPORT MAGAZINE

"...a thoroughly researched and lovingly-written tome published by Rizzoli that joyfully celebrates a style and subculture that still influences everything from music to fashion to interior design." — MUSE BY CLIOS