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What do we mean by “dance songs”? Good question. In a sense, any song that ever got any one person moving in any perceptible direction is a dance song. The Beatles made great dance songs — as did Slayer. Nearly all the hip-hop and reggae ever made is great dance music. But to make our list of The 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time, a song had to be part of “dance music culture.” It’s a more specific world, but an enormous one too, going back nearly fifty years and eternally evolving right up to today and into the future.

The Prodigy, ‘Firestarter’ (1996)

When Liam Howlett, the Prodigy’s producer-composer, came up with “Firestarter,” he figured the song was a finished instrumental. “That track just came out of experimenting, messing around in the studio. Not from thinking ‘Oh, I’ve got to write a single.’” Then frontman Keith Flint heard it and said, “I wouldn’t mind having a go at some vocals on this.” Released a full year before their 1997 alum, Fat of the Land, “Firestarter” glimmered with menace, enhanced by a black-and-white video featuring Flint looking like a cartoon villain come to life. A year later, Fat debuted at Number One on the Billboard album chart. —M.M.

Tori Amos, ‘Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunkin’ Club Mix)’

When it came time to commission remixes for her second album, Boys for Pele, Tori Amos had only one edict: “I just want it to be different. I don’t want it to sound like everything else.” So Atlantic Records reached out to Armand Van Helden, then carving his own lane with a roughneck melding of house beats and jungle-derived low end. Amos’s song — a barely veiled shot at Courtney Love — was “slow, really not moving,” as Van Helden put it, so he remade it into a galloping stomp that runs off a short, amazingly tensile plucked bass line. “Three-and-a-half minutes in off the bass stem, I just grabbed one little bar,” he said. That bar never quits: “Gotta be big,” Amos yelps – mission accomplished. —M.M.

Primal Scream, ‘Loaded’ (1990)

This song is credited to Primal Scream, but the record belongs to producer Andrew Weatherall — it’s a pulsating Dayglo masterwork that calls up its post-acid-house moment like nothing else. Utilizing the bass and slide-guitar parts from Primal Scream’s “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have,” along with an array of other samples — including Peter Fonda’s speech in The Wild Angels and a funky drum sample taken off a white-label 12-inch remix of Edie Brickell’s “What I Am” — it, and the Weatherall-assisted Primal Scream album Screamadelica, recast the band from Sixties jangle merchants to psychedelic futurists. —M.M.

Everything But the Girl, ‘Missing (Todd Terry Remix)’ (1995)

“I have always thought that Everything But the Girl were great lyricists, but they never seemed to be able to get the sort of strong production vibe they needed,” the New York house producer Todd Terry said in 1996. He had asked to remix EBTG’s forlorn ballad “Missing” — a reversal of the usual order of business — and finished it in a day and a half. “It was a pretty easy record to do because the song was there,” he later said. “Go in there, do it, felt good about it, handed it in.” Not only was it a club smash, but it stayed in the U.K. Top 40 for three months. —M.M.

Tom Tom Club, ‘Genius of Love’ (1981)

In the span of just a few years, Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads went from never having picked up a bass to writing one of hip-hop and dance music’s most enduring bass line samples. “Genius of Love” resulted from a one-of-a-kind melting pot in Manhattan during the turn of the decade, as the New Wave and post-punk kids caught wind of the emerging rap and DJ collectives from uptown, who in turn were laying down their own renditions of disco. 

izvor

Daj da mrdoguzam na ovo:

What do we mean by “dance songs”? Good question. In a sense, any song that ever got any one person moving in any perceptible direction is a dance song. The Beatles made great dance songs — as did Slayer. Nearly all the hip-hop and reggae ever made is great dance music. But to make our list of The 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time, a song had to be part of “dance music culture.” It’s a more specific world, but an enormous one too, going back nearly fifty years and eternally evolving right up to today and into the future.

The Prodigy, ‘Firestarter’ (1996)

When Liam Howlett, the Prodigy’s producer-composer, came up with “Firestarter,” he figured the song was a finished instrumental. “That track just came out of experimenting, messing around in the studio. Not from thinking ‘Oh, I’ve got to write a single.’” Then frontman Keith Flint heard it and said, “I wouldn’t mind having a go at some vocals on this.” Released a full year before their 1997 alum, Fat of the Land, “Firestarter” glimmered with menace, enhanced by a black-and-white video featuring Flint looking like a cartoon villain come to life. A year later, Fat debuted at Number One on the Billboard album chart. —M.M.

Tori Amos, ‘Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunkin’ Club Mix)’

When it came time to commission remixes for her second album, Boys for Pele, Tori Amos had only one edict: “I just want it to be different. I don’t want it to sound like everything else.” So Atlantic Records reached out to Armand Van Helden, then carving his own lane with a roughneck melding of house beats and jungle-derived low end. Amos’s song — a barely veiled shot at Courtney Love — was “slow, really not moving,” as Van Helden put it, so he remade it into a galloping stomp that runs off a short, amazingly tensile plucked bass line. “Three-and-a-half minutes in off the bass stem, I just grabbed one little bar,” he said. That bar never quits: “Gotta be big,” Amos yelps – mission accomplished. —M.M.

Primal Scream, ‘Loaded’ (1990)

This song is credited to Primal Scream, but the record belongs to producer Andrew Weatherall — it’s a pulsating Dayglo masterwork that calls up its post-acid-house moment like nothing else. Utilizing the bass and slide-guitar parts from Primal Scream’s “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have,” along with an array of other samples — including Peter Fonda’s speech in The Wild Angels and a funky drum sample taken off a white-label 12-inch remix of Edie Brickell’s “What I Am” — it, and the Weatherall-assisted Primal Scream album Screamadelica, recast the band from Sixties jangle merchants to psychedelic futurists. —M.M.

Everything But the Girl, ‘Missing (Todd Terry Remix)’ (1995)

“I have always thought that Everything But the Girl were great lyricists, but they never seemed to be able to get the sort of strong production vibe they needed,” the New York house producer Todd Terry said in 1996. He had asked to remix EBTG’s forlorn ballad “Missing” — a reversal of the usual order of business — and finished it in a day and a half. “It was a pretty easy record to do because the song was there,” he later said. “Go in there, do it, felt good about it, handed it in.” Not only was it a club smash, but it stayed in the U.K. Top 40 for three months. —M.M.

Tom Tom Club, ‘Genius of Love’ (1981)

In the span of just a few years, Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads went from never having picked up a bass to writing one of hip-hop and dance music’s most enduring bass line samples. “Genius of Love” resulted from a one-of-a-kind melting pot in Manhattan during the turn of the decade, as the New Wave and post-punk kids caught wind of the emerging rap and DJ collectives from uptown, who in turn were laying down their own renditions of disco. 

izvor

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