The 1978 hit Angus Young thought history would forget: ‘Credibility is what counts’
The entire motivation behind every AC/DC song was about stripping rock and roll down to basics.
Every riff that came out of Angus Young wasn’t meant to be the most complicated thing in the world, but whenever you hear them in concert, you can feel that same sense of musical adrenaline that you felt when you heard an electric guitar for the first time. They were trying to capture that feeling every single night whenever they performed, and Angus had no time for the kind of music that was designed to be a flash in the pan.
Because as much as AC/DC are still beloved around the world, part of the appeal was the fact that they stuck to their guns. What was popular at any given moment never really appealed to them, and when you look at every single changing trend that happened since they released High Voltage, there was no other hard rock band that remained as consistent as they have over the years.
I mean, think about the tropes that every band of their ilk has done that they have shied away from. Soppy ballads? No chance those would turn up on an AC/DC record. An unplugged album? That would have been laughed out of the room the minute that they tried to play ‘Back in Black’ without an amplifier. Piling onto a dance craze? That might have been entertaining for two seconds, but Angus only needs one dance move, and it’s that trademark Chuck Berry duck walk.
But that didn’t stop the rest of the world from jumping on that bandwagon when disco started rearing its head. Before anyone starts bashing disco on principle for not being rock, though, let’s make one thing clear: disco is great. A lot of revisionists might like to paint the picture of it being a stain on the 1970s, but there were some fantastic disco artists from around that time. The only problem was that not all of them were charting.
What the rest of the world got to see was a bunch of lame corporate versions of disco, and that was no fun at all. The number-one rule of disco is being able to make you want to dance, and while several artists certainly tried their hand at that style, there were many times when it felt painfully embarrassing. The Rolling Stones never stood a chance at playing that kind of music, and while Angus didn’t want anything to do with the genre, hearing The Village People for the first time was everything wrong with pop music in his mind.
Compared to the timeless riffs that he was spitting out on every one of his projects, Angus felt like the costume-clad disco kings singing ‘YMCA’ were too much of a novelty to be treated like a real band, saying, “If you look back over the charts, you could discover that ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ might have been number eight when it came out, and the song right next to it on the charts might have been ‘YMCA’ by the Village People, you know? But which one had the staying power? The Rolling Stones can still get on stage and play ‘Jumping Jack Flash’ with all credibility, and that’s what counts.”
Granted, none of the Village People really seemed like the kind of musicians trying to make a dent in society or anything. They weren’t trying to be the next Rolling Stones by any stretch, and even if their signature hits do turn up at the occasional sporting event for a laugh, there’s hardly anyone who’s going to claim that those are their favourite songs unless they are under the age of 11.
They do get some points for exposing the world to the more campy looks of what disco always was, but what makes the whole thing funny is where they have ended up in popular culture to this day. Since the brand has shown up and been one of the only bands that managed to play for President Trump, it’s clear that a lot of their legacy feels more like a punchline for the general public than anything having to do with groundbreaking music by any stretch.
