On The Disco Trace

Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall features, among its many hit songs, "Rock With You," a song that, signifies the death of disco. Disco has probably suffered many deaths, its attempt at jouissance, and hedonistism mark it as anti-futurist and therefore already a product and effect of the death drive. But in "Rock With You," one can actually hear the end of an era. "Rock With You" has a standard four-four disco drumbeat, but it is hidden in the production. The disco beat becomes a residue left behind. Instead prominence belongs to the artist for the very first time. And this shift in presence from the music to the artist would signify the end of disco. As a genre, disco had literally no stars and was perpetuated by the moves the beats and the venues. Perhaps the biggest name in disco was Donna Summer, who was still overshadowed by a more important signifier, her label Casablanca records. The Bee Gees, as stars of the Disco scene becomes problematic because their success was linked with the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Before they got the fever, the Brothers Gibb were an Australian rock band rewriting Beatles songs. The trace or residue of the deconstructed sign is always left behind. Rethinking the meaning process, we trace and retrace the signifier onto the signified leaving a ghost image behind. Like Warhol’s Elvis prints, but as Roland Barthes points out in Mythologies, the sign itself is a signifier for another signified. This works for both Donna Summer and the Bee Gees functioning as signs for disco and signifiers for Casablanca and Saturday Night Fever, respectively.

Incidentally, "Rock With You" is the least rockin’ song with the word rock in the title.