Italodance Style Overview
Italodance Music Description
Italodance is essentially Eurodance (or Euro House) music produced in Italy. More specifically, it is a subgenre of House music that was popular in nightclubs during the 1990's in most of Europe, but particularly in Italy. Very formulaic, this style makes heavy use of synthesizers: strong basslines, pounding beats, with a set tempo anywhere between 120 and 160 beats per minute. A typical song will have male rappers sing the verses and female singers perform the chorus, but variations of that formula are frequent. Songs featuring heavy sampling are not rare. Instrumental releases were also fairly frequent.
While Eurodance was born out of cross-influence between various genres, including Hip-Hop, House, Disco and Hi-NRG, Italodance takes heavier inspiration from the 1980's Italo Disco, with several producers from the Italo Disco era crossing over, giving Italodance a distinct sound from Eurodance. Italodance production covers the entire span of the 1990's, but reached its peak in 1993 up to 1996. During this era, production was absolutely massive; many records were being quickly produced, which leaded to inconsistent output quality between releases. Nevertheless, the Italodance wave created a fair amount of internationally successful acts, such as Whigfield, Ice MC, Corona, Da Blitz, U.S.U.R.A., Double You, Alexia, Gala and others. The genre is sometimes expanded to include late 90's/early 2000's acts such as Eiffel 65, the latter work of Gigi d'Agostino and Paps & Skar, which were also very successful overseas.
