The first half of the s was one of the most stressful and upsetting times in American history, with President Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal and resignation, the ongoing Vietnam War , inflation, and fuel shortages. The late '70s response: delightfully superficial escapism in the form of disco. Short for "discotheque," disco music was a celebration of the club scene where well-dressed revelers would party and dance all night to DJs spinning groovy, funky, relentlessly happy songs. It combined synths, guitars, pulsating rhythms, and armies of session violinists to craft songs about joy, pleasure, and living in the moment. It's rare when one type of music so defines and is forever associated with a certain point in time, but disco is just that: quintessentially as '70s as the feathered hair and leisure suits worn by millions of disco dancers. It's ironic and a little extra sad that so many of the musicians who made such happy disco magic didn't have altogether happy lives.