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Hi-NRG
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Hi-NRG (High Energy) is high-tempo disco music (often with electronic instrumentation), as well as a more specific, derivative genre of electronic dance music that achieved mainstream popularity in the mid to late 1980s.
977, Donna Summer was interviewed about her single "I Feel Love", which was a mostly electronic, relatively high-tempo disco song without a strong funk component. In the interview, she said "this song became a hit because it has a high-energy vibe".
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Encyclopedia
Hi-NRG (High Energy) is high-tempo disco music (often with electronic instrumentation), as well as a more specific, derivative genre of electronic dance music that achieved mainstream popularity in the mid to late 1980s.
Terminology
In 1977, Donna Summer was interviewed about her single "I Feel Love", which was a mostly electronic, relatively high-tempo disco song without a strong funk component. In the interview, she said "this song became a hit because it has a high-energy vibe". Following that interview, the description "high-energy" was increasingly applied to high-tempo disco music, especially songs dominated by electronic timbres. The tempo threshold for high-energy disco was around 125 to 127 BPM. In the 1980s, the term "high-energy" was stylized as "Hi-NRG".
In the 1980s "Hi-NRG" referred not just to any high-tempo dance music, but to a specific genre, only somewhat disco-like. Hi-NRG is typified by an energetic, staccato, sequenced synthesizer sound, where the bass often takes the place of the hi-hat, alternating a more resonant note with a dampened note to signify the tempo of the record. There is also often heavy use of the clap sound found on drum machines.
Ian Levine, one of Hi-NRG's pioneering DJs & producers in the UK, defines Hi-NRG as "melodic, straightforward dance music that's not too funky." Music journalist Simon Reynolds adds "The nonfunkiness was crucial. Slamming rather than swinging, Hi-NRG's white European feel was accentuated by butt-bumping bass twangs at the end of each bar."
Mainstream success
From 1979 to 1988, Hi-NRG disco was especially popular among gay males in U.S. coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco. In particular, DJ/producer Patrick Cowley helped popularize Hi-NRG music at the "The End Up" club in San Francisco. Cowley and New York producer Bobby Orlando were behind a number of Hi-NRG hits in this era. Examples of early 1980s Hi-NRG acts include Amanda Lear, France Joli, Sylvester James, Divine, and the Weather Girls. In the same period, a form of Hi-NRG became popular in Canada. The most popular groups of this style are Trans-X and Lime. It wasn't as closely associated with the gay club scene as the form that was popular in the U.S.
In 1983 in the UK, music magazine Record Mirror championed the gay underground sound and began publishing a weekly Hi-NRG Chart. Hi-NRG also entered the mainstream with hits in the UK pop charts, such as Hazell Dean's "Searchin' (I Gotta Find a Man)" and Evelyn Thomas's "High Energy". In the mid-1980s, Hi-NRG producers in the dance and pop charts included Ian Levine and trio Stock Aitken Waterman, both of whom worked with many different artists. Stock Aitken Waterman had two of the most successful Hi-NRG singles ever with their productions of Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)" (UK #1 & US #11 in 1985) and Bananarama's "Venus" (US #1 & UK #8 in 1986).
American music magazine Dance Music Report published Hi-NRG charts and related industry news in the mid to late 1980s as the genre reached its peak. By 1990, however, house music had superseded Hi-NRG in popularity in the clubs, and Hi-NRG went back into obscurity though small labels like Klone and Rumour still bang on about Old Skool and Hardcore music.
Hi-NRG still enjoys an underground following, usually in the form of Hi-NRG versions of mainstream pop hits. Almighty Records, for example, is a recording label which releases many remixed versions of mainstream pop hits in Hi-NRG format, targeting a mainly gay market.
Artists
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