I Don't Want To Hurt You, I Just Want To Love You

I have an unexplainable and inexcusable love for italo disco. I don't know why. I don't dance. I don't go to Eurotrash clubs. I'm not a DJ. I don't mix. I'm not even Italian.

I just like those thin tinny beats, those curious accents, and those swooping sonic sounds digested and regurgitated by that misguided decade we call the 1980s.

Here's the video for "Spacer Woman" by Charlie. The video was released in 1983 and is as bad as you think it is, perhaps worse. But the song... holy smokes, that song. Infectious as a brain-eating virus. Stuck in my head until the day I die.



The last minute is especially groove-a-riffic. Disco-tacular. Something-something.

I first heard this song as part of a Johan Agebjorn mix. You might know Agebjorn as the Sally Shapiro guy. Sally Shapiro is the Sally Shapiro girl. Sally Shapiro is not Sally Shapiro's real name. Sally Shapiro is Swedish Italo Disco. She sings in English and French, but not in Swedish or Italian. CONFUSED? I'm just here for the music.

There are a whole bevy of Agebjorn mixes on his website (the one in question is called "We Go All Night Long"), and they're all quite excellent. So are the Sally Shapiro tunes.

These are my gateway drugs.