| Eurobeat | |
|---|---|
 Super Eurobeat Vol. 250 cover art | |
| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | British Eurobeat: Mid 1980s, United Kingdom Contemporary Eurobeat: Late 1980s, Italy, West Germany and Japan |
| Fusion genres | |
| J-pop[4][5] | |
| Regional scenes | |
| Other topics | |
Eurobeat refers to two styles ofdance music that originated inEurope: one is a British variant of Italian[3]Eurodisco-influenced[6]dance-pop, and the other is ahi-NRG-driven form ofItalo disco. Both forms were developed in the 1980s.
Producer trioStock Aitken Waterman and pop bandDead or Alive made Eurobeat music more popular in the United States and Southeast Asia, where Eurobeat was historically marketed ashi-NRG (pronounced as "high energy"). For a short while, it also shared this term with earlyfreestyle music and Italo disco.
In the late 1970s, Eurodisco musicians such asSilver Convention andDonna Summer were popular in America.[7]
In the 1980s, a highly polished production with "musical simplicity" at its core — fromBubblegum Pop-like lyrics, catchy (in some cases Italian, in other Eurodisco-like) melodies, to "elementary" song structures — an average British Eurobeat song took very little time to complete.[8] Bananarama's "Venus" and Mel & Kim's "Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend)" were said to be completed in a day, according to Pete Waterman ofStock Aitken Waterman.[8]
Eurobeat lyrics and melody are very simple. Italo disco, sometimes fast and happy music likeEDM, with a sequenced octave bassline. Many feature guitars as a beginning section, followed by a thunderous, highly technical synthesizer riff[9] which is then repeated after the chorus. Songs usually repeat the verse, bridge, and chorus multiple times during the song. The beginning is typically like an instrumental rendition of the verse, bridge, and chorus, while the riff is a lot like an instrumental version of the chorus.
beginning (intro) → synth → A melo (verse) → B melo (bridge) → chorus → synth → C melo → ending
British record producerIan Levine's Eastbound Expressway, released the single "You're a Beat" in recognition of the slower tempo of hi-NRG music emerging from Europe. Many European acts managed to break through under this new recognition, namely the likes ofModern Talking,Bad Boys Blue,Taffy, andSpagna. The term "Eurobeat" was subsequently used commercially to describe theStock Aitken Waterman–produced hits byDead or Alive,[10]Bananarama,Jason Donovan,Sonia, andKylie Minogue which were heavily based on the British experience with Italo disco. During 1986–1988, it was used for specific Italian 1980sEurodisco imports, such asSabrina Salerno,Spagna, andBaltimora but was also used in theUnited States as a catch-all term for UK-baseddance andelectropop groups of the time such asPet Shop Boys, purported to have a "European beat", hence Eurobeat. By 1989, with the advent ofEurodance and Euro house, the term was dropped in the UK.
"It's a great hybrid with Motown-style lyrics, an Italian-style melody, and a Eurobeat. It sounds really great on the radio."
The trio of British record producers, songwriters, and former DJs Mike Stock, Matt Aitken, and Pete Waterman were involved in the British underground club culture, encountering the Black American soul music-focused scene calledNorthern Soul, Italian pop-Eurodisco, and sped-up Motown Sound-inspired tracks. As underground record producers, they sought to recapture the "nostalgia" of Motown Sound with a hint of campy playfulness where the simplicity of musical structures, like in Italian disco, was preferred. This musical formula was proven to be successful enough to be capitalized on as they had a string of top 10 UK hits in the 1980s to the point of their version of Eurobeat becoming synonymous with British pop music as a whole.[11]
Pete Burns ofDead or Alive regularly fought the production team over "[having to adhere] to their production methods and concepts" which SAW were "quite firm about". Burns went on making a next album, produced by Burns and Dead or Alive drummer Steve Coy, without them, calledNude. Epic (licensed by Sony Europe) was reluctant about releasing the album but it turned out to be so successful in Japan that it was awarded theJapan Record Award Grand Prix for Best International Album of 1989 in the 'Pop' or 'Popular' Category.[1]
"Three labels have been with us for years now, and they believed in us. Without them, we couldn't have made it happen."
Meanwhile, in Japan in 1985, the term "Eurobeat" was applied to all continental-European dance music imports. These were mainly Italian and West German-producedItalo disco releases. That sound became the soundtrack of thePara Para nightclub culture, which has existed since the early 1980s. Japan experienced Italo disco through the success of the West German groupArabesque, which broke up in 1984. This did not prevent the release of two Italo disco-sounding singles in 1985 and 1986, produced and mixed byMichael Cretu (ofEnigma). The later solo success of Arabesque's lead singerSandra further introduced this sound to Japan. This attracted the attention of many Italo disco producers (mostly Italians and Germans), though by the late 1980s the West Germans had faded out of Italo disco and focused on more popular scenes, mainlytrance.In Japan, this music is called "Eurobeat", "Super Eurobeat", and "Eurobeat Flash".[citation needed]
The JapanesePara Para dance culture is influenced by Eurobeat.In the early 1990s, Eurobeat's popularity was gradually decreasing in Japan. Two Japanese men, namelyMasato "Max" Matsuura the owner and a managing director ofAvex a small import record shop at the time, decided to release acompilation CD. They went to Italy and met Giancarlo Pasquini (later known asDave Rodgers), then a member of the Italo disco bandAleph. Together they restarted in the end of 1990 theSuper Eurobeat compilation, which was beforehand an Italo-disco based CD series[13] released by Beat Freak Label in 1990,[14] a compilation CD which saw instant success and re-ignited Eurobeat's popularity in Japan.[15] Avex also collaborated with foundational Eurobeat labels A-Beat C,Time, and Delta long after Eurobeat's mainstream popularity peak.[12]
Eurobeat's sound (in the Japanese market) is its main link to its Italo disco origins, where it was just one of many different experiments in pureelectronic dance. There are certain synth instruments that recur across the entire genre: a sequenced octave bass, the energetic (sometimes wild) and heavy use of synths, distinctive brass and harp sounds, and tight, predictable percussion in the background.
The 1996 video gameSega Touring Car Championship first featured Eurobeat as racing music. The 1998anime seriesInitial D, based on themanga byShuichi Shigeno, uses Eurobeat music regularly[16] in its episodes during racing scenes between the characters, and because of this it has come to the attention of some anime fans outside Japan. The series, as well as the Arcade Stagevideo games bySega, use a large playlist of Eurobeat songs (for example, the trio of "Deja Vu" byDave Rodgers, from second stage "Running in the 90s" byMax Coveri, from first stage Arcade Stage 2 and Special Stage and "Gas Gas Gas" by Manuel Caramori). from fifth stage and Arcade Stage 5 There are also many Eurobeat songs based on the series itself, including: "Takumi" by Neo, "Speed Car" by D-Team From fourth stage Arcade Stage 4 and Extreme Stage and "DDD Initial D (My Car is Fantasy)" by Mega NRG Man. from Fifth stageInitial D's successor,MF Ghost, the 2023 anime uses Eurobeat as background music in the same way as its predecessor. Another 2003 anime calledDear Boys, which focuses on basketball, also features Eurobeat during basketball game sequences.
In 1998, Bemani, a branch of the video game companyKonami made a hit video dance machine,Dance Dance Revolution. The game acquired Eurobeat songs from theDancemania compilation series published byToshiba EMI. Though there was not much Eurobeat from 2006's SuperNOVA on, the series still features some tracks as of 2021. Other music games in Konami's lineup feature a large number of Eurobeat tracks, includingBeatmania,Beatmania IIDX,jubeat, and many more. The popularity of the genre also led Konami to create aPara Para game,ParaParaParadise, though it was less successful than their other series.
Wangan Midnight the Movie, which was a 2009 film adaptation of themanga and anime series of the same name, features some Eurobeat songs, though only in some scenes as it has an original score playing through race sequences. Similarly, theWangan Midnight Maximum Tune arcade games byNamco feature a trance soundtrack, in a similar way to howInitial D has Eurobeat.
Types of music called "J-Euro" (JapaneseEurobeat) include:
One of the dance moves Eurobeat spawned waspara para (パラパラ), a type of Eurobeat music-inspired Japanese youth social dance performed in unison.[21][22]