D.A.N.C.E. Without Prejudice
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I'm not gonna lie. This blog post started out as a screed against the inanity of certain songs that girls always seem to love. I was going to call it something like "Five songs whose appeal I will never understand", in which I would self-righteously rail against the idiocy of tunes like Big & Rich's "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)" and ABBA's "Dancing Queen".
But when I started examining my list of public enemies (the aforementioned songs, plus "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, and Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive"), I noticed a certain trend. Despite the variety of differences among them, they're all unquestionably dance songs. At the average wedding reception, you'd probably hear at least 2 or 3 of them.
Once I realized that, I knew my blog would be doomed from the start. It's damn near impossible to fairly critique dance songs.
Why?
Because dance music is supposed to be dumb. The mere fact that there exists a certain musical genre called Intelligent Dance Music attests to this, for when even artists are copping to the fact that "unintelligent music" is being created all around them, what choice do we have but to acknowledge it too?¹
And in fact, the dumber the dance song, the more popular it often becomes. Incidentally, by "dumb", we simply mean: purposefully simple in arrangement, melodically and harmonically uncomplicated, lyrically shallow and, often, stubbornly repetitive.
Anyone who's heard a Timbaland-produced song in the last 10 years can pick out many of these hallmarks. The man has clearly found a specific formula for creating danceable pop music, and it pays pretty well: Forbes recently named him #5 on their 2008 Hip Hop Top's Cash Kings countdown. Daft Punk—for all their French cosmopolitan cool and Pitchfork-lavished indie cred—produce a ton of what can rightly be called dumb dance music (sorry, but robot suits and vocoders does not poetic music make). By that same token they're unquestionably the best house music duo around, and have been for many years.
While some songs might be considered more "intelligent" than others, the only true currency in dance music is whether or not the song makes you want to get up and dance. Everything else is incidental, be it instrumental variety (see: "Wait (The Whisper Song)" by the Yin Yang Twins) or lyrical depth (see again: "Wait (The Whisper Song)" by the Yin Yang Twins).²
And so I must admit that what I had set out to do was patently unfair. You can't expect Dylanesque songwriting from dance mixes any more than you should expect Willie Nelson to drop a reggaeton covers record (knocking on wood). So I guess I lost a blog post by admitting that I can't objectively hate some dance songs. But hey, at least I gained one by discovering it.
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¹ Artists implicated in IDM on Wikipedia include Aphex Twin, Goldfrapp, and Dntel. I've even heard The Postal Service described this way, which reminded me of all those times I saw the entire club raising the roof to "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight".
² If a friend ever tells you "I sat down and listened to that La Bouche record last night and it's really deep," you may safely assume that he or she enjoys substantial quantities of peyote in the evenings.
Comments (3)
There's always an exception to the rule, and Donna Summer's "She Works Hard For The Money" might be it. You could dance to it, but there was a message for perceptive folk.
I've heard reports of many people dancing to "What's Goin' On" as well. So there definitely are exceptions.
I've never really understood the term 'dance music' - as if people only realized in the late 70's the pleasure of combining dancing with music and rhythm. Dance music's contribution, it seems, is the removal of any subtlety and variety from the groove. It takes away nearly everything that makes dancing enjoyable in the first place: the spontatneity (and forgiveness) of the moment, the little bit of freedom, the feeling of boundlessness that music also conveys. American music, especially, seems devoted to rhythm: the beat is upfront and instantly accessible, the groove is unavoidable but with just enough swing to make it move right. And, when you finally do get up to dance, it's more like an act of surrender than a rational choice. To me, house music always feels like one incredibly monotonous 4-hour song with slight changes in the breathy robot vocals to let us know when a different track has begun. And why does club music insist on using that neanderthal kick-drum sound? It sounds like a metronome set to stomp-mode. Like other mindless things disguised as art, dance music is just donwright insulting. Everytime I walk into a club playing non-stop house music, I feel like I've been transported into one of those old oar-driven ships, where me and the other poor suckers row for weeks on end to the beat of some repetitive cadence. But I'm actually not on ancient row boat, rather I'm at a glossy little club that takes itself way too seriously. I should be trying my best to get laid, but it's not easy getting in the mood. There's just nothing there. It's like writer's block, but with music. Dance music is just too sterile. It sounds like it's being played by talentless aliens. I find dance/club/house music about as sexy and provocative as the noise a highschool kid makes when he's banging away at the bass drum in the marching band. Where's the groove? How are we suppossed to dance to something so stiif and robotic? Perhaps this is why everyone just ends up dry-humping the night away...lack of gyrational creativity.