Wedding Playlists Part 6: Dance Music

OH BABY IT IS DANCING TIME! Rather than put this song list as a flat out playlist, I decided to blog my dance song selec­tions into groups by genre, audi­ence, and/or func­tion at the wed­ding. No videos this time because I felt like link­ing 42 or what­ever num­ber of videos to this post might be a bit much, and besides they are pretty well-known songs, so look them up on youtube for ya’ own damn selves! What a democ­racy! I spelled that “democrazy” the first go-around, and I feel like that spelling error may actu­ally be more accu­rate, as we are now pre­sent­ing you with hours #6 & 7 of the Joan-has-to-pick-every-single-morsel-of-audio-stimuli-festival that many peo­ple lov­ingly refer to as a “wed­ding day”.

Songs to Make My Friends Dance

Hav­ing been born in the 1980’s—with many of my friends 80’s babies, and many of our aunts & uncles true 80’s grad­u­ates (like prom and wed­ding pho­tos, hair-a-licious 80’s, whereas I was just a kid in neon and sequins 80’s)— music from this decade fared gen­er­ally well dur­ing the danc­ing por­tion of the evening. I would say at least 50% of all those present were danc­ing to these songs.

Poi­son — Bell Biv DeVoe  4:22 — One of our favorite songs since we heard Mos Def per­form it at the Brook­lyn Acad­emy of Music in 2007 backed by a hel­luva brass sec­tion. Our friend Pete was at that con­cert with us and was psy­ched that we played this song at the wed­ding for him! I was sur­prised how many peo­ple knew the words!

Come On, Eileen — Dexy’s Mid­night Run­ners  4:15 — Clas­sic! Of course, all the Irish cousins came run­ning to the dance floor for this one. I got to dance with the cream of the Irish crop, Laura! And Dad danced next to us!

Don’t Go Break­ing My Heart — Elton John with Kiki Dee  4:25 — Def­i­nitely fun watch­ing Regina dance this with her daugh­ter Lily. Yes, ma’am! Pass this song on to the next gen­er­a­tion and let them be here and now raised in the church of Elton!

A Lit­tle Respect — Era­sure  3:32 — This song was for Regina—we saw Era­sure on Cyndi Lauper’s True Color Tour a few years ago—and Caiti had to run and get her because she had gone to take care of her two month old! Imag­ine the nerve! Sur­prise Lover Of This Song Award goes out to Uncle Kevin who I saw singing along to all the words while he was danc­ing with his lit­tle ‘uns!

P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) — Michael Jack­son  3:59 — I was born in 1983, the year of Thriller. No joke, my mom calls it that. Not “the year my eldest child was born”; it’s “the year of Thriller”. Not that I care what she calls it too much, and M.J. can upstage me any day. R.I.P. ANYHOW, this is a song from that album, and my favorite Michael Jack­son song. You gotta have a lit­tle Michael Jack­son at a wed­ding, but I opted out of the more clas­sic M.J. wed­ding selec­tions and chose the song that I love the best!

Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now — Star­ship  4:35 — This is a ridicu­lous song with ridicu­lous vocal­iza­tions, right? I couldn’t help but want to sing this one on the dance floor with my friends, and they did NOT let me down! There weren’t too many peo­ple “fully” into per­form­ing this song—a lot of just “dancers”— but those who were, man, I can’t wait for the video footage. It’ll be sick. I think we may have pulled out some old musi­cal the­atre dance moves?

Songs & Artists That Today’s Gen­er­a­tion Should Know So I Took It Upon Myself To Teach A Lit­tle Les­son At The Wed­ding: A.K.A. Songs I Thought Lit­tle Kids Would Enjoy Danc­ing Too

Walk Like An Egypt­ian — The Ban­gles  3:24

I’m A Believer — The Mon­kees  2:49 — I was raised on The Mon­kees and so too shall future gen­er­a­tions be raised on The Mon­kees. I doth decree it! (“pro­cree”, “pro­ceed”, “demand”, “demure”, “decree”.…that’s how my head got there.…uh ohh­hhh). Seri­ously, kids, learn The Mon­kees.  And the Bea­t­les! (See next song)

I’ve Just Seen A Face — Jim Sturgess  1:50 — I also want kids to grow up on the Bea­t­les, so I infused our lit­tle dance party with my favorite cover from the Across The Uni­verse sound­track. It’s not a well-know Bea­t­les song, which made peo­ple ask “what is this?” and I responded “A Bea­t­les cover!” and then they thought to them­selves prob­a­bly “I need to lis­ten to every Bea­t­les album in order with my chil­dren.” And least that’s what I wanted every­one to think.….

Songs For Old People

Let me clar­ify the title of this sec­tion: I truly LOVE all of these songs, as I am an old soul and what­not. But despite the fact that my gen­er­a­tion loves them, the tar­get audi­ence for  these spe­cific songs was the pre­vi­ous generation.…and the songs worked! They drew more aunts and uncles and grand­mas and moms and dads to the dance floor than any­thing else. Let’s go into the list…

Hey  Ya! — Out­kast  3:55 — I’m being hon­est here, this is a pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion favorite, no joke. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of two things: 1) old peo­ple like it because they have a good, broad, clas­sic taste and this song is really genre-and-time bend­ing, 2) they like it because it makes them feel hip and young and cool, like my gen­er­a­tion will hold them in higher esteem if they “shake it like a polaroid pic­ture”. My final word: this song is an inside joke between Todd, my sis­ter Cat and I about old peo­ple think­ing they are cool based on a spe­cific inci­dent of an old per­son try­ing to be cool, so I’m really not mak­ing up that whole “old peo­ple try with this song” sce­nario. I’m done.

Never My Love — Blue Suede  2:29 — I played this song for my Aunt Mary Anne, who loves the Asso­ci­a­tion (who did the orig­i­nal ver­sion of this song). But the biggest fan turned out to be Uncle Greg, who was really into this cover ver­sion that he didn’t know about. It is a very dance­able cover, I sug­gest check­ing it out! And obvs, great lyrics for a wedding.

Cool Jerk — Capi­tols  2:39 — I played this song because it’s totally Home Alone, the shower scene with the uncle before the fam­ily leaves Kevin (aka “Get out of here you nosy lit­tle per­vert!”), but, like, no one got the joke! So it ended up being a bunch of old peo­ple and my cousin Matt and Laura danc­ing. I was dis­ap­pointed in the recep­tion of this track, but look­ing back I think I put too high expec­ta­tions on it.

If  You Really Love Me — Ste­vie Won­der  2:58 — I did a Motown set because my Uncle Kevin reminded me that since I was raised in Detroit it would be a fit­ting trib­ute. It’s a lit­tle slow to dance to this stuff, but every­one ever knows the lyrics so it’s really fun to dance to. The set ended up being sort of Old Person-oriented because a lot of my friends and cousins left the dance floor dur­ing these songs. So I guess you could say the Older Gen­er­a­tion just out­lasted them? That turns the tables a bit on the whole premise of it being old peo­ple music, so that works!!

Signed, Sealed, Deliv­ered, I’m Yours — Ste­vie Won­der  2:41 — Clas­sic Motown love song!

Love Is Like An Itch­ing In My Heart — The Supremes  2:57 — Really cleared the dance floor, thought that still meant about 20 peo­ple danc­ing. I did my really bad chore­og­ra­phy from when I was a kid to this song: it basi­cally involves me stand­ing totally still for all of the verses and then putting my index fin­ger up with an itch­ing ges­ture for the cho­rus. But I can’t actu­ally itch with it because “love is like an itch­ing in my heart, tear­ing me apart, an itch­ing in my heart, and, baby, I can’t scratch it”.

You Can’t Hurry Love — Supremes  2:45 — Def­i­nitely a song about the two of us, who first wanted to get mar­ried in 2005 when I grad­u­ated from col­lege, but instead pro­ceeded to live in dif­fer­ent states for the next five years and pur­sue grad­u­ate school and careers while main­tain­ing a long-distance rela­tion­ship. You could not hurry us, lol.

(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave (David Eli­zondo Mix) — Martha Reeves & The Van­del­las  3:09 — MOTOWN REMIX!! A great record put out by Motown Records in 2007. Thanks for the record, Dad!

Get­tin’ Jiggy Wit It — Will Smith  3:48 — This was a song for my mom, though every­one who lived through the 90’s really got a kick out of the play­ing of this song as well. My guess is that most of the peo­ple present haven’t heard the song since the 90’s, though that cer­tainly isn’t the case for my imme­di­ate fam­ily. We rock this album hard still to this day. Don’t worry ’bout it.

We Are Fam­ily — Sis­ter Sledge  3:37 (See also, “Songs I Wish The DJ Hadn’t Played) — My mom really wanted this song played, and I really think it’s ter­ri­ble, but wanted to appease her. She was threat­en­ing that she’d just make the DJ play it any­ways, so I fig­ured why not have some con­trol over it and request it. I put it on the list and said “Do not play this near the end of the night.” This song makes old peo­ple do stu­pid things like form kick lines and cir­cles and it really dri­ves me crazy, so the less peo­ple were drunk when it played the bet­ter. Ugh, I hate this song. I actu­ally had to hide dur­ing this song because Todd, know­ing how much I hate this song and kick lines, started a kick line dur­ing this song to poke fun at me and got about 7 peo­ple on the line and they kept call­ing me over to join. Hello, no. And, hell no. I don’t think any­one would have noticed that this song and songs of its lame ilk were miss­ing from the night if I had totally erased them from the playlist, and I do think that there are less lame, equally rec­og­niz­able disco songs out there to play, but I was happy to see my momma’s smil­ing face on the dance floor when it played. Doing her lit­tle roll dance moves, smil­ing at her sisters-in-law and nieces and nephews, sur­rounded in love. That I am OK with!

Songs Every­one Danced To

I Gotta Feel­ing — The Black Eyed Peas  4:49 — We opened the dance floor with this beauty and it was mag­i­cal. Per­fect lyrics to start the night off with! Mazel tov! Aunt Chris loved it espe­cially, she kept say­ing “This is my song!” So awesome!

Human — The Killers  4:06 — Sec­ond to last song of the night. Ded­i­cated to my sis­ter Caiti, who loves The Killers and who danced this whole song with me, our our knees, look­ing for the answer. This song was the sur­pris­ing hit of the night though for me because the dance floor was packed, and I didn’t think that many peo­ple knew the song! It ended up so awe­some because my other sis­ter Lind­say and my Dad joined Caiti and I for the sec­ond half of the song and we rocked hard like half a fam­ily unit should. The lyrics were also ridicu­lously appro­pri­ate for the night because as it turns out my fam­ily is filled with danc­ing mani­acs, and the run­ning joke now is that we are not human, we ARE DANCER. I loved that song’s moment that night—Maggie (maid of honor) put a video of it on face­book, so check it out!

Don’t Stop Believin’ — Jour­ney  4:11 — Last song of the night, and EVERYONE came out to sing along. Toddy and I did air gui­tar solos at the bridge. This was the only dance of the night for many of the uncles! And it’s not really a dance, it’s like a giant group sing-a-long, which was incred­i­ble! Glee fans, Jour­ney fans, clas­sic rock fans alike can all rock to this song now, and rock we did! Oh, and every­one yelled “born and raised in South Detroit” at me, which was awe­some! Maybe some­one taped that, because our video­g­ra­pher had already clocked out at that point.

Songs No One Danced To, And It Was Embarassing

All I Want Is  You — Barry Lousi Polisar  2:40 — This was the low­est point of the night, though it was funny and turned out fine, so it wasn’t really that low. The dumb­est DJ in the world, my DJ, chose to play this slow, not-very-well-known song IMMEDIATELY AFTER BLACK EYED PEAZ “I GOTTA FEELING”.…like, are you kid­ding me? Third song of the night? Just got every­one on the dance floor? Just got the party started? Energy is high and every­one is hav­ing a blast? I can’t wait to see the video to laugh at this moment again, lit­er­ally EVERY SINGLE PERSON left the dance floor. I actu­ally began danc­ing 100% alone in the cen­ter of the dance floor dur­ing the first cho­rus because it was so ridicu­lous. A cou­ple of cousins and sib­lings whipped out some gym class square danc­ing moves and assisted me. It was awful. Funny in a very sad way. I danced with Todd so what can be bad about that. I had a friend who did this song as her wed­ding party dance song and it was adorable, so it was espe­cially sad that my play­ing of the song went so hor­ri­bly wrong because I’ve seen it done right and it is awe­some. C’est la vie?

Songs I Wish The DJ Had Strate­gi­cally Axed, Rather Than The Songs Below Because They Weren’t As Good As The Ones He Axed

So here’s the sec­ond list that could be sub­ti­tled “The Dumb DJ”. These are songs he played that using any bit of logic, he should have axed since we had started the danc­ing a half an hour late and lost a chunk of time. Because these songs were played, oth­ers were not, and most of the songs he cut were much bet­ter choices for danc­ing than these songs below. Now don’t get me wrong, I love these songs below, but look at the list of songs he DID cut and you’ll see what I mean.

I  Want You — Bob Dylan  3:06 — Great song and got a great response, but I would have lived with­out it. Only the cho­rus actu­ally makes sense for a wed­ding, the rest is typ­i­cal Dylan metaphor aka total gibberish.

We Are Fam­ily — Sis­ter Sledge  3:37 (See also “Songs For Old Peo­ple”) — Well, as you may have read above, I hate this song. And suf­fice it to say that no one would have noticed it was missing.

Jun­gle Drum — Emil­iana Tor­rini  2:14 — No one knows this song, and hence very few peo­ple danced to it. It’s a great song to dance to, but using dis­cre­tion, this would def­i­nitely be one to cut. Still, I appre­ci­ated the TK Kelly cousins and Aunt Chris’ mas­ter­ful impromptu drum chore­og­ra­phy to the song.

Happy Peo­ple — R. Kelly  4:47 — Love love love this song, but it’s a seri­ously unknown song, and again when you look at what he cut when he chose to play this, you’ll be like “What what??!”

Con­crete & Clay — Unit 4 + 2  2:17 — Also love love love this song, but it’s a seri­ously unknown song, and again when you look at what he cut when he chose to play this, you’ll be like “What what mcwhaterstein??!”

Songs My Dumb DJ Didn’t Play Because The Dumb Group Pic­tures Took Too Long

You Make My Dreams Come True — Hall & Oates  3:11 — SERIOUSLY? YOU CUT THIS SONG??? HOW?? Sad­ness per­son­i­fied, espe­cially because my fam­ily loves Hall & Oates and because Toddy & I love this song!

Mod­ern Love — David Bowie  3:59 — I am Bowie’s biggest fan in my gen­er­a­tion. I love that spi­der man from Mars. And this is his love/ wed­ding anthem…“get me to the church on-time”. I was appalled that this was cut.

Just Can’t Get Enough — Depeche Mode — Super­fun and ridicu­lously dance­able 80’s track. You keep R. Kelly, but you cut these songs? Seri­ously? It’s get­ting ridicu­lous, right?

Every Lit­tle Thing She Does Is Magic — The Police  4:21 — CLASSIC! DANCEABLE! SINGABLE! Sad­ness personified.

I  Would  Walk 500 Miles — Pro­claimers  3:36 — Ditto from above.

I  Want You — Sav­age Gar­den  3:53 — Okay this song is so hilar­i­ous “chicka cherry cola” and I could just see it being a super fun moment on the dance floor because no one except me has heard it since 1996. But that moment never came…

Songs I Was Okay With The DJ Axing

White Wed­ding — Billy Idol  4:09 — Cliche. lol. Yeah, I put it on the list but now that it wasn’t played I can see what a good choice that was since it is cliche.

Get Outta My Dreams Get into My Car — Billy Ocean — Very long but fun, I wish we’d had time for every­thing but was okay that this mem­ory wasn’t made.

Jun­gle Love — Steve Miller Band  3:09 — Okay with cut­ting, since I am sin­gu­larly along in my love of this weird song.

Lions — The Fea­tures — Okay with cut­ting, no one knows it and it was included on the wed­ding favor mix cds.

Give It to Me Baby — Rick James  4:18 — Long and would have got­ten old, but he only cut it because I told him to cut it. He gave me cut­ting power only for the last three songs, so thank­fully this was cut and “Human” by The Killers was spared. Imag­ine if it had been the other way around? Gross, I don’t even want to think about it.

Robot Danc­ing Com­pe­ti­tion Song

Accept­able in the 80’s — Calvin Har­ris  5:34 — Nobody knows the song or the artist but that didn’t mat­ter because it was totally the best robot dance com­pe­ti­tion song ever. Per­fect per­fect per­fect choice, and one of the best moments of the whole wed­ding day expe­ri­ence. It was mostly lit­tle kids com­pet­ing and our friends Derek and Pete, lol. Troop­ers on the Joan & Todd behalf front­lines. My cousin Nate sur­prised us by danc­ing at all, because he’s a quiet kid, but then sud­denly he BLEW US AWAY when we saw how seri­ously he was tak­ing it and how much dance he was doing! His encore per­for­mance totally stole the show! And it was totally unex­pected! The best part was the prize for the com­pe­ti­tion was a C3P0 doll and the kid is a mega-fan of Star Wars. Couldn’t have been more per­fect! Exceeded all of my expec­ta­tions, and I had high expec­ta­tions for the com­pe­ti­tion, but you just can’t even plan for some­thing as amaz­ing as that. Can’t wait to share the video with you!

Songs For Todd

Ain’t Too Proud to Beg — The Temp­ta­tions  2:35 — Toddy sings this to me all of the time, as a joke obvi­ously. I love the man, and it was very spe­cial to have him sing this to me sur­rounded by our fam­ily and friends on the dance floor!

Don’t you Worry ’bout a Thing — John Leg­end  4:47 — Toddy loves loves loves John Leg­end, and this cover of a Ste­vie Won­der clas­sic is so dance­able it’s sick. This was a great moment of the night. I think this was the moment that my cousin Matt unleashed his salsa hips! Mr. 100% Irish sur­prised us all!

Oh  Yoko — John Lennon  4:16 — This was the first song of the night and we had our par­ents and the wed­ding party all dance it with us. Per­fect tempo when you hate to slow dance. Not a lot of peo­ple know it, it’s prob­a­bly most notably rec­og­nized from the Rush­more sound­track. We love the song though and it was sim­ply won­der­ful to sing it to each other on the dance floor while my sib­lings danced ridicu­lous gym class square-dancing moves all around us.

Two Princes — Spin Doc­tors  4:21 — Todd saw them in con­cert a few years ago and had so much fun. I have always loved the song and this album, so this is musi­cal ground that Todd and I can solidly agree on. This was one of the most fun moments of the night because every­one was totally lov­ing the blast from the past and remem­bered all the lyrics. It’s also very dance­able, so I highly rec­om­mend it for playlists!