Disco Inferno | Chords + Lyrics
Intro
| (Eb Db B Ab) | (F–Gb Eb Db Bb C) |
||: Cm (G C Eb F Bb) | Cm (G C Eb F) |
| Cm (G C Eb F Bb) | Cm (A Bb B) :||
Chorus 1
||: F | Bb | C | C :||
Burn baby burn. Burn baby burn.
Burn baby burn. Burn baby burn, burning!
Verse 1
||: Cm | Cm :||
To my surprise, listen, one hundred stories high.
People getting loose y’all, getting down on the roof. You hear.
Folks are screaming, out of control.
It was so entertaining when the boogie started to explode. I heard somebody say.
Chorus 2
||: F | Bb | C | C :||
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) Burn the mother down.
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) Burn the mother down, burning!
Verse 2
||: Cm | Cm :||
Satisfaction (woo, oh, how!), came in a chain reaction (burnin’).
I couldn’t get enough, ’til I had to self-destruct (woo, oh, how!).
The heat was on (burnin’), rising to the top, hm.
Everybody going strong (woo, oh, how!), and that is when my spark got hot. I heard somebody say.
Chorus 3
||: F | Bb | C | C :||
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) burn that mother down y’all.
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) burn that mother down, burnin’.
Middle 8
| Bb | Bb | C | C |
Up above my head, I hear music in the air
| Bbmaj7 | Bbmaj7 | C N.C | Cm (G F Eb D G) | Cm (G F Eb D) |
That makes me know, there’s a party somewhere.
Verse 3
||: Cm | Cm :||
Satisfaction came in a chain reaction. You hear?
I couldn’t get enough, so I had to self-destruct, hm.
The heat was on, rising to the top, hm.
Everybody going strong, and that is when my spark got hot. I heard somebody say.
Chorus 4
||: F | Bb | C | C :||
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) Burn that mother down.
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) Burn that mother down.
(Burn baby burn) Ah hey! (Burn baby burn) Burn that mother down.
(Burn baby burn) Disco Inferno. (Burn baby burn) Burn that mother down.
Disco Inferno’s chords and progressions
Starting with the craziest bass line ever, where they seem to have left the mistake (sliding from F to Gb, Disco Inferno’s chords continue to be all about the bass.
These are the intro notes: Eb – Db – B – Ab – (F) Gb – Eb – Db – Bb – C. As a keen student of scales, I’d love to tell you what that was, but I have no clue!
When the band comes in, it does so by playing a Cm over a four-bar bass line.
Now it’s more obvious that we are playing notes from the C Dorian mode. The 6 isn’t actually in there, but in this style, it’s never Aeolian, so Cm is chord II.
The next section is in F as it goes F – Bb – C. I – IV – V. This means that when we go back to Cm, it briefly feels like a Vm.
Few songs use Vm, (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, being the only one I know of.
If you compare the two songs you can tell that this is not a Vm, instead, it’s a modal interchange from Mixolydian (chord V) to Dorian (chord II). This makes complete sense as the only difference between the two modes is the 3rd.
The only other section is the “Up above my head, I hear music in the air…”, which I would probably call a M8.
Here we play Bb – C, that’s IV – V. You could then play Bbmaj7 when it loops. After a stop, the bass leads us back from C to Cm by going: G – F – Eb – D.
In order to understand chords, modal interchanges, and music theory, it’s extremely important to connect the theories to the ear. On that note, compare Disco Inferno’s chords with the chords of Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, it too uses C and Cm, although in a different way.
Disco Inferno needed Saturday Night Fever to break through!
Disco Inferno by The Trammps has a very unusual history. Originally released as a single from the album with the same name in 1976, it had little success.
When the extended, almost 11-minute-long version appeared on the soundtrack for Saturday Night Fever, the tune went back into the charts and became known worldwide. Ironically, it’s the shorter, edited version that’s famous!
Since the late 70s, Disco Inferno has been covered by Tina Turner, Cindy Lauper, and every disco band to ever play a gig.
The Trammps never had another hit but Disco Inferno kept them in the loop. As late as 2016, Bernie Sanders used it in his campaign with the slightly altered lyrics Bern, Baby, Bern.
Using the chords and lyrics above, you can learn how to play Disco Inferno.
Disco Inferno chords | Relate pages
Five similar tunes with chords and lyrics
The Trammps
Best known for their smash hit Disco Inferno which featured in the film Saturday Night Fever, The Trammps did have more tunes.
Most notably Hold Back the Night, That’s Where the Happy People Go, and The Night the Lights Went Out.
The Trammps on the web
Dance, Disco & Funk
