Colin Lewis: To identify real trends, imagine looking back on them from the future

Disco music was the sound of the summer of 1979: Chic, Donna Summer and Gloria Gaynor were at the top of the charts. The Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever soundtrack had been number one for 18 weeks and, as a result, many US radio stations switched to all-disco formats.
However, punk rock was the cultural zeitgeist in the music press, and the rock journalists and DJs hated disco. Artistically, punk was seen as more important because it was more dangerous. Compared with punk’s political