Taiwan’s forgotten disco era and the singers who made it big with covers of Abba, New Order and David Bowie

As Taiwan’s young generation dust off retro disco records, scholars consider how the island came to embrace the Western music genre, and its impact on Mandopop

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A disco single by Frankie Kao. As Taiwan’s younger generation dust off disco records from the 1970s and ’80s, so, too, are scholars looking into how the island came to embrace a Western music genre at a time when even dancing in public was illegal.

David Frazier

Published: 7:45am, 10 Mar 2024

“Blue Monday”, by the British 1980s band New Order, is generally considered the biggest-selling dance single of all time. The song celebrated its 40th anniversary last year, but within months of its March 1983 release, an unauthorised Mandarin version was put out in Taiwan by singer Frankie Kao under the title “Love is Like Green Olives”.

Kao’s version cut the seven-minute dance track in half and added cheesy female backup singers. The lyrics were rewritten into a Mandarin love ballad that bemoans how green olives, like a failed love affair, leave a bitter taste.

Otherwise, the synth loops, driving drum machine beats and overall danceability of the song make for a remarkable knock-off.

But Kao copied much more than just New Order.

New Order - Blue Monday (Official Lyric Video)

On just a single album from 1980, its cover emblazoned with the English word “disco”, he produced Chinese versions of Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”, Anita Ward’s “Ring My Bell”, Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?”, Blondie’s “Call Me” and Boney M.’s “Gotta Go Home”.

In all, he copied dozens of Western dance floor fillers. One of his most enduring, “Nao Ren De Qiu Feng” (“Unsettling Autumn Wind”), still sung today by some of Mandopop’s biggest stars, is nothing more than a Mandarin rewrite of Abba’s “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!”