In 1977, Bernard Edwards and Nile Rogers had success producing music for others, and they had a hit with their band Chic's new single Dance Dance Dance (Yowsah Yowsah Yowsah). The song was popular at the legendary club Studio 54 and other disco clubs. On New Years Eve in 1977, Edwards and Rogers were invited to studio 54 by Grace Jones - who wanted them to do some production work for her. They showed up sharply dressed to celebrate the new year, but they denied entry into the club. After exhausting every attempt to get in, the two walked off and immediately composed a song called "Fuck Off". When they came around to recording the song they decided that they should drop the cursing, so "Ahhhh, Fuck Off!" became "Ahhh Freak Out. The single was Atlantic Record's best selling record of all-time - selling 2 million copies in the US.

In 1954 film star Rosemary Clooney introduced screenwriter/composer Bob Merrill's apparently suggestive song Mambo Italiano. The song - based on a traditional Italian folk-like dance song - had been composed on a napkin in an Italian restaurant. When the song was released it was banned by New York's WABC radio. The station didn't understand the lyrics and assumed them to be suggestive. In an attempt to convince the station that the songs lyrics were not suggestive, Clooney's record label provided statements from a Catholic priest and a professor of romantic languages.

In 1980 Joy Division released Love Will Tear Us Apart, which posthumously became their signature song. Lead singer Ian Curtis wrote the song while his marriage was falling apart. The song was inspired by the 1975 Captain & Tennille hit Love Will Keep Us Together. When Love Will Tear Us Apart was released in April 1980, it - like other releases from Joy Division - it got little attention. A month later Curtis hanged himself. Joy Division never continued without Curtis, and the bands remaining three members formed the group New Order. The tombstone of Ian Curtis is inscribed with "Love Will Tear Us Apart" as an epitaph