70s Disco Songs: 98 Hits You Can Play in One List

By Charlie · Published August 10, 2026 · Updated November 10, 2026

▶ Listen to the Whole Disco List

The biggest 70s disco songs on the Billboard charts are Night Fever by the Bee Gees, with 8 weeks at No. 1, and Shadow Dancing by Andy Gibb, the top song of the 1978 Year-End Hot 100.

Disco's best year was 1979, when 34 disco songs made the Year-End Hot 100.

This page lists all 98, from Love's Theme in 1974 to Good Times in 1979, and 97 of them play right here in one continuous list.

Donna Summer, 1977 Casablanca Records publicity photo.

Image credit: Francesco Scavullo, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Full List: Press Play Once

Every song here is tagged disco in this site's chart data and placed on a Billboard Year-End Hot 100 from 1974 to 1979.

Press Play on any row and the list keeps going, song after song, until you press Stop.

Tap a column heading to sort by year, year-end rank or weeks at No. 1.

Year is the year-end list the song first appears on, and Year-End Rank is its place on that list.

I Love the Nightlife made two year-end lists, so its row shows both ranks.

Weeks at No. 1 counts the song's weeks on top of the weekly Hot 100, from this site's chart data (how the data was built).

Makin' It by David Naughton has no Play button: the original RSO recording has no official artist, label or Topic upload on YouTube, only later re-recordings.

Five More Disco Hits the Year-End Lists Left Out

The year-end chart keeps only each year's 100 biggest songs.

These five disco records were weekly Hot 100 hits that never made a 1970 to 1979 year-end top 100.

Dim All the Lights peaked at No. 2 in November 1979, and Ladies' Night peaked at No. 8 in early 1980, so their year-end runs fell outside the decade.

Each weekly peak comes from the song's own linked Wikipedia article.

What Makes a Song Disco

Most of the records in the list share the same building blocks:

• A bass drum on every beat, the four-on-the-floor pulse.
• An open hi-hat hissing on the off-beat.
• A bass line that jumps between octaves.
• String sections and horns over the groove.
• Electric pianos, and by 1977 synthesizers.

The tag in this site's data marks where a record sits, not every song with a dance beat.

Boogie Wonderland, Heart of Glass and I Was Made for Lovin' You by Kiss all carry the disco tag here.

Rock and funk acts crossed onto the dance floor at the end of the decade, and the chart shows it.

Disco on the Charts, Year by Year

No song on the 1970 to 1973 year-end lists carries the disco tag, so the count starts in 1974.

From there it climbs almost every year.

1979 had 34 disco songs on the year-end list, more than triple the 11 from 1977.

The rise did not stop when the backlash began that summer.

The Weekly No. 1s, by Year-End List

• 1974: TSOP (The Sound of Philadelphia), Rock Your Baby, Love's Theme, and Rock the Boat.
• 1975: Fame, Jive Talkin', Kung Fu Fighting, The Hustle, and Get Down Tonight.
• 1976: Disco Lady, Fly, Robin, Fly, Love Hangover, That's the Way (I Like It), A Fifth of Beethoven, and 4 more.
• 1977: Best of My Love, Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band, Don't Leave Me This Way, I'm Your Boogie Man, Dancing Queen, and 2 more.
• 1978: Night Fever, Shadow Dancing, Stayin' Alive, Boogie Oogie Oogie, Grease, and 1 more.
• 1979: Le Freak, Bad Girls, Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?, I Will Survive, Hot Stuff, and 7 more.

The full story of each year sits in Top Songs of 1977, Top Songs of 1978 and Top Songs of 1979.

The Acts With the Most Songs Here

Four acts placed four or more 70s disco songs on the year-end lists.

Donna Summer's count includes Heaven Knows, credited with Brooklyn Dreams.

The Bee Gees turned all five of their songs here into No. 1 hits, 17 weeks on top in all.

Chic's Le Freak alone spent 6 weeks at No. 1.

Maurice Gibb with the band's Billboard Number One Award, 1977.

Image credit: NBC Television, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

More Acts With Their Own Pages

• Diana Ross, with Love Hangover and The Boss.
• Village People, with Y.M.C.A. and In the Navy.
• Earth, Wind & Fire, with Boogie Wonderland.
• ABBA, with Dancing Queen.
• Barry Manilow, with Copacabana.
• The Jackson 5, with Dancing Machine.

For every group of the decade in one place, see 70s Bands.

Where Disco Started

The sound began on the dance floor, years before it had a name.

New York clubs were the biggest scene, with Philadelphia, Baltimore, San Francisco, Miami and Washington close behind.

DJs built whole nights out of soul and funk records, and the beat mattered more than any one voice.

Where the Word Came From

Disco is short for discotheque, French for a library of records.

The word was first used for Paris nightclubs that turned to playing records during the Nazi occupation.

The Loft and the Sound System

David Mancuso's New York party, The Loft, set the standard for the sound.

He added tweeter arrays above the floor and extra subwoofers under it.

By the time the major labels caught on, the music had years of dance floor testing behind it.

Disco Demolition Night, July 12, 1979

The year disco had its most songs on the chart was also the year of its loudest backlash.

Chicago radio DJ Steve Dahl staged a promotion between games of a White Sox doubleheader at Comiskey Park.

Fans got in for 98 cents if they brought a disco record to be blown up on the field.

• The White Sox hoped for a crowd of 20,000.
• Official attendance was 47,795, and owner Bill Veeck estimated 50,000 to 55,000 inside the park.
• Dahl blew up a crate of records between games.
• Between 5,000 and 7,000 people then rushed the field and tore up the grass.
• Riot police cleared the field, and the second game was forfeited to the Detroit Tigers.

Did It Kill Disco?

The night picked up a nickname almost at once: the night disco died.

By late 1979 and into 1980, record companies began calling their releases dance music instead.

Dahl said in a 2004 interview that disco was "probably on its way out" by 1979, and that the night "hastened its demise."

The backlash changed how the sound was sold, not how well it had just sold.

Gloria Gaynor, photographed in 1976.

Image credit: Rob Mieremet / Anefo, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons and the Dutch National Archives.

Studio 54 and Saturday Night Fever

Studio 54

Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager opened Studio 54 on April 26, 1977, at 254 West 54th Street in Manhattan.

The building opened in 1927 as the Gallo Opera House and later served as a CBS studio.

In its first month the club drew about 2,000 guests a night.

Rubell and Schrager pleaded guilty to tax evasion in November 1979.

Saturday Night Fever

The soundtrack came out on RSO Records on November 15, 1977.

It carries Stayin' Alive, Night Fever and More Than a Woman, and has sold more than 40 million copies.

It won the Grammy for Album of the Year, the only disco album ever to do so.

The soundtrack's best-known ballad has its own story in How Deep Is Your Love.

Keep the Dance Floor Going

Disco grew out of soul and funk, and both genres have their own pages here.

• 70s Funk covers the groove side, from James Brown to Parliament.
• 70s Soul Music covers the voices that disco borrowed.
• The 70s songs list ranks the decade's 100 biggest hits across every genre.
• The Random 70s Song Generator picks a track for you.

For hours of 70s disco hits mixed with the rest of the decade, tune in to Listen Now, the site's 70s radio.

Every genre on the site is collected on the 70s Genres page.

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