3 No. 1 Hits From 1976 That Always Feel Nostalgic (Even if You Weren’t Alive During the Disco Era)

The year 1976 was all about disco. Here are some tunes you definitely know, even if you weren’t alive at the time.

Videos by American Songwriter

“Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John and Kiki Dee

This song was Elton John‘s sixth No. 1 in the U.S., and his first with Kiki Dee. According to Dee, the iconic pair still keeps in touch decades later.

“I think that we’re not what I call, um, everyday friends, you know. When I speak to him, it’s like it was yesterday, and I speak to him two or three times a year, yeah,” Dee shared with GBNews. “I mean, he’s very empathic. I lost my sister last year, and had a long chat with him about it, and yeah, so he’s my real friend.”

“You Should Be Dancing” by The Bee Gees

It doesn’t take a lot to understand this song. “You Should Be Dancing” asks only one thing of its listeners: get up, forget your troubles, and hit the dance floor.

Apparently, in Saturday Night Fever, during the scene where John Travolta shows off his moves in the club, the song playing was supposed to be “Night Fever”. Travolta lobbied for this song, though, and it ended up making the cut.

“Play That Funky Music” by Wild Cherry

“Play That Funky Music” is probably one of the most danceable songs of this era. As frontman Rob Parissi explained, though, it kind of emerged out of necessity for Wild Cherry.

Rock clubs were closing, and the band needed a song that was going to keep them relevant. After a club-goer asked the band if they were going to “play some funky music,” one night, inspiration struck.

“So I walked out and wrote down exactly what was going on with us,” Parissi told Harry Comick Jr. “I had the first two verses in the chorus written by the time I got to the stage, and I wrote the last verse in a car on our way home.”

He continued, saying, “Yeah, my joke’s always been if I knew how big that song was going to be, I would’ve stayed up that night and wrote 700 more songs.”

Photo by: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images