Your homework for the week...

[venta]

Felix is on a mission. Not, as you might expect, to take over the world, but to compile a list of the top 200 songs guaranteed to get people on a dance floor.

So, for the past couple of hours I've been suggesting songs, and he's been dissing them mightily and telling me nobody but me and my two friends have heard of them. (Oh, apparently only one friend).

I still haven't stopped arguing for Another Girl, Another Planet by the Only Ones. Or disagreeing that nobody in their right minds would get up to dance to Boys and Girls by Blur.

So. I want a list of the songs you think everybody would get up to dance to. This is everybody, even that girl over there who clearly has dreadful taste.

It worries me that this list will consist largely of 80s bilge and Abba, and therefore you're also welcome to tell me the songs that would make you get up and dance.

Comments

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Empirically the most dancefloor-magnetty tune ever appears to be Come on Eileen. I can find no scientific explanation for this.

(Amongst my friends it's Road to Nowhere, Bohemian Rhapsody or Aerosmith's Pink, but I doubt any of those three are universal in this respect.)

[verlaine.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that there are songs that everybody would get up and dance to. There'll always be some contrary git who hates the upbeat populist stuff and would rather dance to Leonard Cohen, mentioning no mes.

One thing I do think is good to dance to and might be mainstream enough is Iggy Pop's The Passenger.

Anyway, what does Felix know about anything, I'd dance to both of the songs you cite.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

nobody in their right minds would get up to dance to Boys and Girls by Blur.

And it's Girls & Boys.

[floralaetifica.livejournal.com]

I agree, there are no songs that *everyone* would dance to. Personally I love Boys and Girls, and hate Come on Eileen. So lets see. Smells like teen spirit seems to work very well on the idiots in the nightclub next door who keep me awake, but then so does the Lion Sleeps Tonight. I'm Your Man always works at the LGB bop. At least it did when I was there, though they may now be so young that they have no idea who Wham were. Nostalgia, then, must be a big factor, and of course different age groups are nostalgic for different eras.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Venta : It worries me that this list will consist largely of 80s bilge and Abba,

Having DJed at the RPGSoc Christmas party on occasion, I can say (with authority) that there is some accuracy in that description. Abba, particularly Waterloo and Dancing Queen, always works.

Other hugely successful stuff :

Aerosmith - eg. Love in an Elevator, Dude Looks Like a Lady, Pink
Blondie/Debbie Harry - eg. I Want That Man, Sunday Girl
Sisters of Mercy - Lucretia
Talking Heads - Road to Nowhere (or the live version of Burning Down the House)
Garbage - eg. Supervixen, Paranoid
Bryan Adams - eg. Summer of 69, Run from You
Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody is probably the most universally popular one I've found

Things that cleared the floor :
Talking Head - Psycho Killer
Abba - Anything that wasn't a top ten hit

Essentially people will dance to things they recognise, even if they regard them as bad taste.

Venta : and therefore you're also welcome to tell me the songs that would make you get up and dance.

I don't enjoy dancing. I prefer playing requests. ;-)

[(Anonymous)]

Have to agree with this list, having run (a while back) a few school discos.

My experience of those was that people who don't normally dance would always join in with anything which had a silly dance to go with it: the Macarena, Locomotion, Twist etc. Another good one was Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.

Definitive list

[(Anonymous)]

Your requirement that this be a list of songs _everyone_ will dance to makes it easy to compile. I will not dance to anything; I am, according to Sue, one miserable git when it comes to dancing. Therefore, your definitive list is:

[]

--
Richard

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Open Up (Leftfield)
Laid (James)
Sex Dwarf (Soft Cell)
Happy Birthday (Altered Images)
Vogue (Madonna)

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

I'm astonished nobody has yet said:

Jump Around, House of Pain.

also, 5 years ago you could have had
Fool's Gold, Stone Roses, as a 100% guaranteed floor filler almost anywhere, but everyone has got very bored and jaded now and wouldn't be seen dead dancing to anything so utterly nineties.

I once saw a TV show in which Peter Stringfellow, who arguably must know quite a lot about dancefloors having lived on and around them for 173 years now, claimed that the most guaranteed floorfiller he knew was New York, New York, Frank Sinatra.

[liriselei.livejournal.com]

Song 2 by Blur
Flagpole Sitta by Harvey Danger
It's The End Of The World As We Know It by REM
probably something by Fatboy Slim
possibly also Mum's Gone To Iceland by Bennet

i suspect that Placebo, NMA & NIN may be a little too specific to the kind of clubs i frequent

[venta.livejournal.com]

...but you don't think Bennet and Harvey Danger are obscure ?

I don't know who the second is, but that may be just my ignorance.

It always surprises me that things I think are obscure are always really well-known, and vice versa...

More cash, dada, give her more cash, dada...

wilfully obtuse

[liriselei.livejournal.com]

...but you don't think Bennet and Harvey Danger are obscure ?
well, yes, they probably are. but then how many of any of the songs mentioned so far has your average trendy teenage popkid heard of ?
does it really matter how obscure or well-known something is if it serves the purpose of getting anyone who will dance at all onto the dancefloor ?
i for one find the bouncy basslines to both irresistably danceable, and most of the people i've been in a club with when either of them's been played seemed to agree. isn't that the main point of the whole exercise ? <quizzical raised eyeborw>

I don't know who the second is
nor would i if not for Panic!. really must try to make it along next term...

i'm not sick but i'm not well; & i'm so hot, 'cos i'm in he-ell...

[cuthbertcross.livejournal.com]

If everyone is very drunk, then
Cotton Eye Joe by ?the Rednex?

How about somebody writes a song called "if you don't dance to this then I'll track down and kill your momma?"

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

It's "get up to dance to", not "get up and fuck off home tout de suite".

[smiorgan.livejournal.com]

Tubthumping
The Timewarp (so obvious, no-one's mentioned it yet)
Blame it on the Boogie



you're also welcome to tell me the songs that would make you get up and dance.

Moretti's Dutch Skipper. I expect it would have limited appeal, however.

[neilh.livejournal.com]

Well, I'll always dance to anything by NMA, Creaming Jesus or Fugazi, but I fear I may be atypical.

As for individual songs, AGAP gets me every time, Spear of Destiny's Liberator too (yeah, yeah, I know, but that one was actually good, besides its got some memories for me), and Carters Rubbish.

[venta.livejournal.com]

anything by creaming Jesus ?
You can dance to Celebrity Cannibalism?
I'm impressed :)

[neilh.livejournal.com]

If they're prepared to play it in a club, I'll dance.

Most fun, of course, is to dance to the Cures version of A Forest as if it were the Creaming Jesus version...

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Aha, finally found VH1's 100 greatest floor fillers list.

Their's is one of the worst websites ever, so as far as I can tell to see the list you must:

1) Turn on all the scripting in your browser.
2) Go to http://www.vh1.co.uk.
3) Click "charts" in the top left corner.
4) Click "100 greatest"
5) Click "Floor Fillers".

Job done. "Dancing Queen" is their number 1.