Good Day Atlanta viewer information: June 19, 2023
Songwriter reflects on 45 years of 'Nightlife'
Forty-five years ago this week, a song written and recorded in metro Atlanta exploded onto the music scene, becoming an international hit and a bona-fide dance classic. Susan Hutcheson explains how the 'I Love the Nightlife' started in a 100-year-old Douglasville home.
ATLANTA - One of the biggest hits of the disco era has ties to Douglasville:
Forty-five years ago this week, a song written and recorded here in metro Atlanta exploded onto the music scene, becoming an international hit and a bonafide dance classic.
And it turns out that iconic song has deep roots in a 100-year-old Douglasville home.
Susan Hutcheson grew up in the house on Campbellton Street, which her family has owned for 70 of those 100 years.
"When it was being built, it was a dirt road … and the builders of the house camped across the street in tents," says Hutcheson. "And my dad was 6 years old and would ride his bicycle down the street from the house where he lived with his family, and watched them build this house."
Behind the home’s bright yellow door, Hutcheson fell in love with music. And it’s where she and a singer named Alicia Bridges began writing and recording music demos in the 1970s.
"We set up a recording studio in the dining room," recalls the songwriter, "on a borrowed tape recorder from Eastside Elementary."
One of their songs began its life with a simple chord progression played by Bridges -- and took lyrical inspiration from a music genre sweeping the country.
"We started noticing disco. Disco, disco, disco. ‘Disco Duck,’ ‘Dis-Gorilla,’ disco everything. And somehow, we came up with the idea of the record spinning ‘round. And the record is the disc: ’disco ‘round,’" she said.
Released in the summer of 1978, their song "I Love the Nightlife (Disco ‘Round)" was soon burning up the charts. It eventually went gold and even earned a Grammy nomination for Bridges’ vocal performance. It showed up on movie soundtracks (notably 1994’s "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert") and became an enduring anthem for the LGBTQ community.
"Yeah, I had no idea that would happen," says Hutcheson. "But where we got accepted and where we got the bookings was in all the gay clubs."
Forty-five years later, Susan Hutcheson still plays and writes music during breaks from working on her childhood home. She lives in the house full-time again, after years of residing in Cape Cod — and now, surrounded by her family’s history, remains a bit awed by her own.
"It was a dream come true. To hear your words and your songs come to life, what more could you want?"
Because of her musical accomplishments, Hutcheson is also part of the Douglas County Hall of Fame. There’s a Hall of Fame exhibit inside the Douglas County Museum of History and Art in Downtown Douglasville — for more information on the museum, click here.
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