26. Seventeen Dancing Songs
I think I’ve surprised some people in the past with this particular confession - I quite like dancing.
I’m not much good at it, of course. And most opportunities for dancing in public tend to intersect with alcohol consumption, so that’s been a factor in enthusiasm, I’m sure.
But there’s no denying it - there are a number of songs that will have my feet dragging me, unwillingly, to the dance floor.
And once there, they’ll conspire with my hips, shoulders and hands to try and create some sort of coherent pattern of movement vaguely connected to the music.
It doesn’t always work - but it’s damned fun to try.
The hardest part, I’ve long believed, is quieting that voice in the back of your head telling you how stupid you look (correct), that everyone’s watching (who cares?) and you’re not even doing it well (correct).
That, and making sure you don’t emulate Elaine Benis’ very individual stylings.
So, given the last two posts have been, well, heavy is perhaps the best term, I thought this halfway point is the perfect time to roll out the list of Songs Guaranteed To Make Me Involuntarily Move.
A quick note - there is no irony in this list. These songs are damned great, danceable tracks.
I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me) - Whitney Houston
I’m playing this as I write and damned if I’m not already doing some grade-A chair dancing. I love every part of this song - the drum fills, the brass and synths under it.
And, of course, Ms Houston’s incomparable voice. It doesn’t actually sound like she’s trying very hard, and then that chorus kicks in and, well, if that doesn’t make you at least bob your head, bounce your knee or do the chair-cheek shuffle, I don’t know what to say.
But my favourite part - one of my favourite parts in any song - is that crescendo when she drops the restraint, just little. Right around 4:22. Enjoy!
I have a feeling that the beat and bass line in this song taps into some part of our DNA.
Maybe the rhythm is built into that double helix or something. Because I’m yet to meet a person that can resist that groove-of-all-grooves.
Nothing I can say will add to this song. So I’ll simply suggest that, the next time you’re in a lengthy queue, either put this song on or hum it.
Its cosmic ability to make time pass quicker is extraordinary.
This might be more of an entry-level track because it’s really good for that foot-to-foot shuffling you see on the dancefloor around entrees, when the wine hasn’t really started flowing yet and the only people dancing are the kids and the couple where the husband doesn’t know anybody at their table so he’s accompanied his more confident wife to the dancefloor to ‘keep her company’ without the remotest comfort in moving to music so he resorts to foot-to-foot sideways movements with the odd clap to compensate.
Anyway, this song is less ‘arms flailing around like I’m fleeing a swarm of bees’ and handily accommodates our dancing husband.
Until that saxophone at 3:00! It’s a glorious, glorious sound that should wipe any sneers in the room.
Flail, you poor bastard, flail!
Since U Been Gone - Kelly Clarkson
Here’s the thing - I love Kelly Clarkson’s music. Always have.
It’s always felt like a guilty pleasure, but hey, I have ears. So how could I not like it???
It’s pure 2000s-pop. The ‘punky’ guitars, drum loops, one-finger synth and power chords into the chorus, with her voice gripping the song by the arm and emphatically making her point.
Leave aside any other comments about Ms Swift - this song is a rolled gold, certified, pop classic.
It’s got all the ingredients - prominent percussion, background brass and victorious vocals, with the requisite post-bridge breakdown.
It’s a sing-a-long classic, with the prescribed dance moves handily in the lyrics for anybody unsure about how to coordinate their limbs.
It’s also one of the few tracks where clap-dancing is acceptable.
Note - there are not many of these.
Clapping is very, very rarely acceptable. Don’t be that person.
Tightrope - Janelle Monae feat. Big Boi
But somebody that can get away with clapping in every song is Janelle Monae.
I mentioned that Nick Cave is just cool in a previous post - well Ms Monae makes him look like a man wearing long socks, sandals and a terry toweling hat.
Outrageously talented, terrifically interesting, vocal, clever and fun, she also releases the odd banger of a track.
And this one must carry some of that Superstition-level DNA linkage because stuffed if I can hear it without just wanting to slide around corners, with my arms up like a Broadway backing dancer and lip sync (not sing. Never sing) the entire track.
Her delivery is perfect, the vocal range is amazing and the whole time is that beat, that thumping drum line tangling with the ‘classy brass’.
God, I love this song.
We all know this song (going by that view count anyway).
We’ve all danced to this song (I hope - or else you might want to see a doctor).
There’s nothing more to say about it. It’s dance floor perfection.
It’s also completely bonkers, of course, and shouldn’t work at all. They’ve taken 38 different songs, thrown them into some sort of funk-blender and poured this into everyone’s ear holes.
I imagine I’ll be dancing to this at my 80th birthday party, while the newly-cool kids look down their hologram noses at me for dancing to that oldie music.
Still, it is ice cold, isn’t it.
Valerie - Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse
Recent research has come out, announcing that if you had this at your wedding, yours was a good wedding.
It’s an unbreakable causative link, apparently, like safety measures and accusations of a ‘nanny state’, or discussions on equality triggering some people’s white male entitlement reflex.
Said research hasn’t made it clear if it’s the simple, live drumbeat, the groove right smack in the middle, that basic piano line or Ms Winehouse’s deceptively laidback vocals.
Is it the way it makes every person feel like they’re in a swing dancing competition in their head? Or how we can sing “good lawyer-yer-yer”?
Who knows? But you have to dance to it.
It’s science.
You! Me! Dancing! - Los Campesinos!
I’ve never danced in public to this. Well, not in a formal setting anyway.
There was that time on the train where I was bopping my knee as the song built towards the explosive guitar entry, then start rolling my head as the song kept smashing forwards in a flurry of manic activity and melody, before I caught the eye of the elderly couple in the seats a few rows away and thought it best to tamp it down a little.
But that doesn’t really count.
This is a wonderfully effervescent song that should make you feel warm and good inside.
Just watch out for inadvertent grooving on public transport.
What’d I Say, pt. 1 & 2 - Ray Charles
The live versions of this song - where Mr Charles can really let go and tap into the room’s energy - are the standout versions.
But the album one does a fine job of capturing the bananas combination of instruments, musicianship, rhythms, melodies and those poor cymbals.
Another classic chair-dancing track, it’s also incredibly useful if you’re partial to the odd bit of car-dancing.
Windows down, preferably, if only to glare at those other people in traffic playing Skrillex or Alan Jones or something similarly shameful.
Be warned though - it’s frighteningly easy for your car-dancing to become a parody of Mr Charles mannerisms while playing guitar.
Don’t do that.
Black Man in a White World - Michael Kiwanuka
This song has a bit of a deeper meaning for me, which I’m deciding whether or not I want to cover in a separate post.
But regardless, that guitar riff over the loop of clapping is an incredibly inspiring groove.
The reverb comes in, in fly the backing singers and then boom, the kick-drum starts banging down doors.
It’s a bittersweet experience dancing to this - the lyrics are filled with sadness, alienation and regret - but between his voice, that guitar and that clapping loop it’s pretty hard to say no to that foot that just wants to tap.
Are You Gonna Be My Girl - Jet
When I was working at an electricity retailer, one of the ‘real music’ fans there told me - between calls - that this song is a pale version of many, many far superior songs.
It’s derivative, boring, soulless garbage, he went on.
I sat there, listening intently, nodding my head while he kept going.
The whole time thinking “well, this is somebody I can never talk to again or be friends with.”
Not to be confused with the (arguably better) song by Iggy Pop, this one is all triumphant brass and propulsive drum beats.
There’s a video of Robbie Williams irritating his wife in the maternity ward by dancing to this song, which is funny, cheeky and a bit wrong (a la Mr Williams I suppose).
But the thing is, the dance he does is perfect. It’s all rolling shoulders, upraised arms and swiveling hips.
So now whenever this song comes on (shockingly often in our house) that’s the dance we do, formerly to the joy of our son - but now it’s very much to his distaste.
Touch the Sky - Kanye West feat. Lupe Fiasco
I have very mixed feelings about Kanye West. Incredibly so.
But the sample he’s used in this track and the beat he’s paired it with is perfection.
It’s good enough to shade out his rapping (at this stage, the line ‘for a rapper, Kanye makes a good producer’ was strikingly accurate) even if the eventual triumph story really resonated.
How can you not want to move to those horns? Plus, bonus verse from Lupe Fiasco, and a closing burst of ‘I’m sky high, I’m sky high’ which is oh-so-singable.
Still, it’s Kanye, so there’s that.
They Don’t Care About Us - Michael Jackson
Speaking of ambivalent feelings, I’ve really debated including a Michael Jackson song on this list.
Reconciling the person with their art is a challenge I think any music fan is facing, especially with the revelations pouring out. And that’s particularly challenging when it comes to Michael Jackson’s music. Enjoying these tracks involves a complicity that I’m not entirely comfortable with.
But, I also can’t deny that this song punches me square in the dance. It’s my favourite of his songs by a big margin. So here it is - for better or worse.
My basic ears can’t discern any actual melody in this song; I feel that it’s all rhythm, no melody, which has always amazed me.
Well, until those guitars kick in at 3:00 and noodle around the track chasing that descending synth line.
It’s an angry song, a fist-in-the-air declaration with a great group sing-a-long backing track. It descends into a critique of the police state of the time.
But it is, as with most of his songs, an inherently danceable tune.
The clapping beat underpinning it all is easy to make your shoulders fall in with; the spitting lyrics are easy to tune out when all you want to do is dance.
Still, it’s a Michael Jackson song, right?
Logo Te Pate - Olivia Foa’i, Opetaia Foa’i, Talaga Steve Sale
This song doesn’t have the same emotional resonance for me as the ‘big’ track from Moana. But the opening minute of this track makes me want to dance every single time I hear it.
It’s the Polynesian percussion, the harmonised voices that reminds me so much of those Sunday’s spent, bored, in a Tongan church listening to the congregation put professional choirs to shame.
It’s the optimistic delivery, the chipper guitar in the background, it’s the non-English lyrics and the upbeat pace.
And it’s how much my son loves it when it comes on and we dance around the living room to it.
Who Run The World (Girls) - Beyonce
There are, of course, any number of Beyonce songs I could have included in this list.
But can you really go past this one? Leave aside the rest of the Queen Bey show - this is a great song.
I mean, I’m sure there are internet thought bubbles criticising it, Beyonce, the director, writer, the extra walking in the back of the video, but I don’t really care.
It’s on the aggressive side of assertive, what melody there is a loop of a disjointed vocal, it layers reverb on reverb on reverb, with a drum line that communist military’s look at and go “whoa - that’s tight”.
And that drum fill around the 1:00 mark in that video is, well, fantastic. And the one around 2:50. (I like a good drum fill…)
Now, I know I’m not the target audience of this track. But damned if this song doesn’t make me want to march in lockstep with a crew of power, with hands in the air and a groove in my step.
I hope that’s not an isolated reaction.
And that’s my list, my list of some of the songs guaranteed to make me want to dance.
Or to spontaneously break out in a barely-synchronised cacophony of gestures and tics in a public place.
I call it dancing though.
