Bobby Orlando Biography

Disco dance artist and producer Bobby Orlando, also known as simply Bobby "O", was one of the lead producers for the disco era. Working closely with groups like Barbie & the Kens, I Spy, Roni Griffith, Waterfront Home and Pet Shop Boys, Orlando oversaw an incredible number of Billboard hits through the decades, attaching his relentless attitude to his post-disco music to continue pumping out hits well into the ‘00s.Orlando grew up in New York as the son of a Westchester school teacher, but his talent and drive for everything music-related trumped his mother's wishes for his continuing education. Straight out of high school, Orlando turned down an offer for a classical music scholarship, opting instead to partake in music as a guitarist in teenage glitter bands. Eventually stepping foot in sound engineering, Orlando was completely enamored by disco music, and most of his career was spent under its wraps trying to hold onto the passing phase. First engineering Todd Forester's "Dancin" in 1977, Orlando next contributed to one of Lyn Todd's albums in 1980 before creating his own O Records. After engineering hits "Just a Gigolo" for Barbie & the Kens and I Spy's "Change of Life," disco started to die, forcing Orlando to move more into electronica beats than his disco love. Orlando collaborated with Divine in 1980, comprising a string of successful singles before 1983, when Orlando released the album Freedom in an Unfree World.Orlando helped Roni Griffith and Waterfront Home achieve chart-topping success in the early ‘90s, and by1995 Bobby "O" had released another solo album, 1995's His Banana Republic. Masterminding groups like the Flirts, Lisa Lisa & Cult Jam and Full Force, Orlando formed a massive underground movement known as Hi-NRG. In the late ‘90s Orlando started to phase out of the music industry, even writing a book refuting the theory of evolution before making a comeback with Outside the Inside and Excited, both released in 2005.