“Good Things Don’t Last Forever”: A Dalliance with Disco?

Abstract This article examines the idea of liminality in decadence and American disco; of living through a unique moment on the precipice of potential disaster. It discusses how this idea was envisioned through popular conceptions of 1970s disco in its own time, particularly in how Studio 54, the culture’s most famous if also atypically celebrity-driven club, embodied seventies conceptions of decadence in the USA. This article argues that embracing pleasure in the now, despite crisis, can be a decadent way of finding meaning amongst the uncertainties of society and individual lives. Disco is argued as one manifestation of decadence developed towards the cultural conditions of its own perceived time of upheaval.