Can I reply in English? This is a topic near and dear to my heart, and I have a lot to say. Don't worry, it's all good

Are you ready?

Wait. First, I have to take this on a tangent

Dasha, I have to applaud you for thinking and writing about this kind of thing. You are not just a collector in the way of many people I know (hoarders)... instead, you are a true lover of music. You actually listen to your music! You would not be writing such things otherwise. Please keep doing this! You are already an expert in ways that 99.9999% of people are not. It's really exciting to see someone so passionate about music. Of course we all are here, but you're doing something about it. You're always listening and reading and learning, and you take all this information and your impressions and your own ideas...and you organize, filter, and concentrate everything into a single understanding which you express in writing, in your own words, perhaps in the way you wish you could've encountered it yourself, for the first time. Believe me, people spend years at universities and get advanced degrees without ever mastering this skill—a skill which comes naturally to you. Please keep reading, keep writing, keep listening, keep asking questions.

OK now, another tangent:

You mentioned the English Wikipedia article on freestyle. This is one that I monitor and made minor contributions to, but I haven't given it as much attention I'd like. To be honest, it's kind of a mess. If the stricter Wikipedia editors ever decide to take a look at it, it's going to be gutted, as it's mostly just firsthand, unverifiable claims. But for now, it's what we have, and it's mostly OK. Maybe some things are wrong, but not in a harmful way. With these kinds of articles, sometimes it's good to just skip to the end and look at the References section. In the freestyle article, there are 2 references that you should read to get a better understanding of freestyle's history (apologies if you've already seen them):

1. History of Freestyle Music by Joey Gardner. Joey was a freestyle producer and manager who did a lot of work for Tommy Boy Records. His main productions were TKA and Information Society. His 'history' very much reflects his personal experiences, so it's not as objective as it could be, and it has many gaps. However, it has some good info. This text is actually what he wrote in 1994 for the liner notes of the Freestyle Greatest Beats compilation CD.

2. The Bluffer's Guide to Freestyle, an article written by Michael F. Gill for a reputable music magazine called Stylus, shortly before it closed down in 2007. This one is better written. However, you may find this funny: one of the comments from a reader is "I just hopped over to Wikipedia (sometimes hardly a bastion of accuracy) and in its opening sentence about Freestyle I got a clearer picture than I did from reading this entire Stylus article." So there you go. Anyway, what I like about Gill's article is how the emphasis he gives to Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" and Shannon's "Let the Music Play", while at the same time making it pretty clear, except to that commenter, that these songs were "embryonic", "foundational" records upon which freestyle was developed, not actually representative of freestyle themselves. This reminds me, I often see "Let the Music Play" in Italo Disco collections, too...strange, because it's not Italian and doesn't sound much like Italo Disco at all, to me.

I haven't explored the world of freestyle compilations yet. I just have a small collection of 12" singles and a handful of files, even though I love the genre. I'm not sure if you're saying that you have found all of the songs in your "freestyle" list on compilations, or what. But I can say that sometimes, record companies and compilation producers will stretch the definition of a word... ZYX did this in 1983 when including non-Italian productions on the first "Italo Boot Mix" and "Best of Italo-Disco" compilations. But even if they hadn't, I think it's natural that people would apply the word Italo to things like Bad Boys Blue, Fancy, and Dieter Bohlen productions. So it wouldn't surprise me to find that this happens with freestyle collections, as well.

Anyway... back to your post. I can tell you all about the mood in America at that time...I graduated from high school in Ohio in 1988, and in recent years I've been on a quest to find music, text, and video from that time, so it's a subject that's near & dear to my heart. I was very excited to recently find some weekend dance shows from the radio, that are just like what I used to listen to. I will make a separate post about them. Anyway, all through the '80s, I feel I was very tuned-in to what was popular in the mainstream. I can't say that very many of the songs in your lists were big hits; most of them are new to me, with a few exceptions. And the links are not working, so I can't download the files. But I created some YouTube playlists with the same tracks.

A couple of thoughts:

Your classification of certain examples of bright, happy, upbeat dance-pop as a broader kind of "freestyle", distinct from the moodier, melodramatic, traditionally defined "Latin freestyle", is reasonable. It's somewhat like talking about "Italo disco" that actually includes Dutch or German productions made in a similar style, as compared to actual made-in-Italy productions. Or "ambient" which is really more like trance without hard beats, not sonic wallpaper in the way the Eno envisioned. Some people prefer to reserve the use of words for just the "pure" form, but the point remains that the delineation exists, even if the names are not ideal.

A serious, pedantic freestyle DJ may argue that technically, only Latin freestyle is authentic and deserving of being called freestyle, and that just because a pop song has a certain kind of beat or vocal style that's reminiscent of this kind of freestyle doesn't make it "a different kind of freestyle". I wouldn't begrudge someone for saying that, but I wouldn't say they're necessarily right, either. I mean, in your "bright" freestyle list, you've successfully identified songs which have elements of the other genre in them, elements which are not found in other music; it can't just be a coincidence.

Or can it? The sound was in the air; 1985-1989 was a time in America when steady, disco-style beats were completely gone from the mainstream radio. Everything was syncopated, everyone was using stabs, and horns, and solo female singers were belting out straight pop vocals without R&B affectations. Daytime & weeknight radio was filled with ballads, hair metal, and this kind of cheery dance-pop. At night on the weekends, radio stations would play the slightly darker, moodier sounds... a good example is "Fascinated" by Company B. You would hear that during the day on occasion, but it was mainly a night song. Also at that time, everyone wanted to sound "hard", yet squeaky-clean, polished, positive. It was inevitable that they would copy each other, or go in somwhat the same direction as the underground, urban club sound of Latin freestyle.

But no, when I listen to your examples, I think you've picked up on trends that connect across the line you've drawn between the two styles. The producers of these records knew about the Latin freestyle sound, and they were deliberately or subconsciously incorporating bits of it, sometimes ever-so-slightly, in their radio-friendly tracks. The result was another sound, still freestyle, but not the same kind as before.

I'm not sure this answers your question, or if I even understood it properly. I rely on Google Translate (built-in to the Chrome browser) to read Russian, and it turns all Russian into, like, some kind of Japanese haiku, often difficult to understand. Well, I hope at least it was interesting to read my reply.

Basically I'm saying that I don't think you (or whoever decided to call your first list 'freestyle') have stretched the definition too far. You've drawn a line where a line can certainly be drawn; you've distinguished two different types of music. And you gave each type a name. So I think you have answered the question for yourself, and anyone here would be a fool to argue that you are somehow wrong to have done such a thing. If any of you ever get to browse my music collection (and you can, if you have Soulseek), you'll find many such lines drawn, perhaps where others wouldn't have thought appropriate. There are folders for the clubby, upbeat, pop-infused forms of dance music, and these folders are separate from the folders for the relatively "pure" forms of those genres.