Disco Week - and I pick the songs!

Disco week. In spite of the genre’s shameful reputation, there are a LOT of great disco songs but most were played in the clubs and not the radio. So chances are we won’t hear what I would call the good stuff because it’s too obscure.

To wit: The Greatest Disco Song of All-Time in the History of the Cosmos and Even When the Cosmos Was Just an Idea in God’s Mind - is Risky Changes by Bionic Boogie. Raise your hands if you’ve ever heard of it. Didn’t think so. It was actually the B side of Dance, Little Dreamer (probably never heard that one, either) which was a #1 song on Billboard’s Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1978. Risky Changes featured an unknown at the time singer named Luther Vandross! I could rattle off a bunch more great disco songs like this that we won’t hear on the show because they are too obscure - unless you spent much of your early adult life in dance clubs as I did.

OK, here’s The Greatest Disco Song Everybody Has Heard Of: Vicki Sue Robinson’s Turn the Beat Around. And please, keep Gloria Estefan’s version away from me.

Here are the songs that should NOT be sung and, if so, the Idolists, the guest mentor, Ricky Minor and the band, and the producers of Idol should all be flogged:
YMCA or anything else by the Village People unless it’s San Francisco – their fabulous first single which I'm sure nobody has heard of.
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy – I LOVE Rod Stewart and this song is proof I am a forgiving person.
Copacabana – Barry Manilow. I rest my case.
Dancing Queen or anything else by Abba – sorry Mama Mia fans but a movie with Abba songs? I have no words for how deep and excruciating my pain is that such a thing is even possible.

This week could challenge the Idolists as much as Country Week but here are some popular songs that I think would be interesting to hear from each of them. I tried as much as possible to recommend songs that most Idol watchers would be familiar with.

Adam –Disco Inferno (Trammps), You Make Me Feel Mighty Real (Sylvester)
Lil – Don’t Leave Me This Way (Thelma Houston), I Will Survive (Gloria Gaynor)
Allison – Hot Stuff (Donna Summer); or a rocked-up Turn the Beat Around (the aforementioned Vicki Sue Robinson) - but we've never heard her sing a fast song
Anoop – Boogie Nights (Heat Wave), Rock With You (Michael Jackson)
Danny – Don't Leave Me This Way – (Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, in case Lil doesn’t do the song); or Livin’ It Up (Friday Night) – Bell and James
Matt – Got to Give It Up (Marvin Gaye) – he could totally slay this
Kris – a "Kris-ed up" version of More Than a Woman (Bee Gees) will have ladies in and out of Scottsbluff, NE going totally nuts
Alexis - Shame (Evelyn "Champagne" King). What's that? She was? Really? When did that happen? Wow, that is SO wrong.

Speaking of Danny and Lil, I don’t know the rules around Idolists singing the same song or even if the two versions of Don’t Leave Me This Way are considered the “same” since they are by different artists. But I think it would be WAY cool to hear the female vs. male versions of the song – kind of a competition within a competition.