Disco is a musical style that emerged in the early 1970s from America's urban nightlife scene, where it originated in house parties and makeshift discothèques, reaching its popularity between the mid-1970s and early 1980s. Its initial audiences in the U.S. were club-goers, both male and female, from communities in Philadelphia and New York City. Disco can be seen as a reaction against both the domination of rock music and the stigmatization of dance music by the counterculture during this period. Several dance styles were also developed during this time including the Bump and the Hustle.
Disco was the last mass popular music movement that was driven by the baby boom generation. Disco was a worldwide phenomenon, but its popularity drastically declined in the United States in 1980, and by 1982 it had lost most of its mainstream popularity in the states. Disco Demolition Night, an anti-disco protest held in Chicago on July 12, 1979, remains the most well-known of several "backlash" incidents across the country that symbolized disco's declining fortune.