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Hi-NRG

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Hi-NRG (High Energy) is a type of electronic dance music which was popular in nightclubs in the early 1980s and remains popular today.

Contents

Description

The name "Hi-NRG" comes from the Evelyn Thomas's Disco hit, "High Energy", produced by Ian Levine. Hi-NRG is typified by an energetic staccato sequenced synthesizer sound where the bass often takes the place of the hi-hat. There is often heavy use of the clap sound found on drum machines. During 1984 the music began to crossover into the mainstream pop charts in the United Kingdom and the United States, largely due to the success of the Record Shack record label.

Record Shack also enjoyed chart success with tracks by Break Machine and an unlikely comeback single by Eartha Kitt ("Where Is My Man", 1984) which proved to be a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic ocean. Stock Aitken Waterman were Hi-NRG producers at the start of their career, working with Divine and Hazell Dean, and producing the most successful Hi-NRG track, Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)", which reached number one in the UK. Hi-NRG was largely superseded by House music but still enjoys an underground following, usually in the form of Hi-NRG versions of mainstream pop hits. The more modern sound of Hi-NRG that emerged during the 1990's is a major force in the Club/Dance music world thanks to mainly two essential Hi-NRG artists, Kristine W. and Abigail. Its basic production has remained nearly the same. However, the rhythms and synths used sound different as it is usually edgier.

Many of the Hi-NRG tracks produced in Europe at the time qualify doubly as examples of Italo disco (i.e., Bobby Orlando, Taffy, Magazine 60, Divine, Roni Griffith, the Flirts, Lime, etc.) and discofox (i.e. Linda Jo Rizzo, Lian Ross, Modern Talking, Fancy, Lift Up, Blue System, Bad Boys Blue.)

Association

The style is often associated with gay promiscuity, thus Miquel Brown's "So Many Men, So Little Time" and Hazell Dean's "Searchin' (I Gotta Find a Man)", whilst typically sung by women, are actually aimed at gay men. It is also associated with camp excess and gender bending by artists such as Divine, Sylvester, Pete Burns and RuPaul.

Artists

Records

All of these records reached the Hi-NRG charts in the late 1980s:

Number Ones

These records reached Number One in the Hi-NRG charts compiled by James Hamilton and Alan Jones in Record Mirror

Cover Versions in the Hi-NRG style

Record Labels

Record labels that most frequently appeared in Record Mirror's Hi-NRG chart are as follows:

Source

External links

Disco
Bright disco - Dance-punk - Disco polo - Euro disco - Hi-NRG - House - Italo disco - Spacesynth
Artists - Discothèque - Nightclub - Orchestration - Other electronic music genres

 

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