From Miley to Jorja Smith, six artists have been singing about dancing this year, but which song gets us moving the most?
Music and dance are a little like CatDog. Unique in their own way but connected at the waist. To separate them would require cutting through the flesh that binds them, leaving both sides bloody, mutilated and without legs to stand on.
We go to the club to dance, the club hires a DJ to play the music we dance to, and without that connection, we stand still. Even when the tune is slow, and the vibes are low, there’s always something in us that calls for movement. To jump around the room like Meredith and Cristina, to sway in place like a daisy in the wind, to throw our hands up, reaching for the sun, as we let the song course through every fragment of our being. Because we believe music to be a medicine that can only be delivered through our fingertips, down to our toes, as we surrender ourselves to movement.
This connection stretches far beyond the creation of clubs. Long before we found ourselves under flashing lights, with speakers pounding over our heads and our bodies so tightly pressed together, music and dance were already intertwined. A thread woven through every generation, binding us to those who came before and reminding us that we’re never quite as far apart as we seem.
Maybe that’s why, decade after decade, musicians keep screaming about dance, like sisters who can’t seem to have a conversation without bringing up the fact that they have a sister. Michael Jackson beckoned listeners to get on the floor on Off the Wall in 1979, Daft Punk and Pharrell Williams turned that invitation into a worldwide call to lose yourself to dance in 2013, and Ezra Collective celebrated the freedom of moving without inhibition on Dance, No One’s Watching just two years ago.
No year goes by when dance isn’t the star of at least one song. But this year, the subject seems to have found a new volume. Like a whisper slipping from one musician to the next, growing louder with every retelling, until suddenly, everyone can’t help but have something to say about it.
But who’s singing about it best this year?
6) ‘Bass Persuades’ – Miley Cyrus
The lead single, and title track, off Cyrus’ tenth studio album is perhaps one of her more generic offerings, sitting somewhere between ‘Mother’s Daughter’ and Endless Summer Vacation, like two people walking in the same direction on opposite sides of the street, close enough to acknowledge one another but never quite meeting. Through the song, Cyrus laments that ‘the kids don’t wanna dance’, urging listeners to surrender to the night because ‘if we ain’t moving, baby, baby, why are we here?’ While the catchy beat and easy-to-follow rhythm are enough to get bodies moving, the song never quite reaches that deeper, almost spiritual place where movement requires no thought.
5) ‘Dance No More’ – Harry Styles
On his latest album, Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally., Styles takes issue with a grave and entirely overlooked problem: DJs don’t dance no more… or so they say. With a sound that wouldn’t feel out of place on a Jessie Ware album, the song rides on an easy, almost buttery beat, with a steady drum pattern that builds the urge to move with every hit. But just as the body is charged up and ready to go, the song ends, leaving you with the feeling of a dance that’s barely got started.
4) ‘Dance’ – Ayra Starr
The Nigerian pop star’s contribution to this year’s catalogue of dance anthems is a celebration of the simple pleasure of being alive. There’s a warmth to the way she sings about being happy with the life she has, her contentment settling into the song like sunshine through an open window. That feeling finds its fullest expression when she sings ‘I just wanna DANCE’, drawing out the final word into a long, hypnotic note that seems to suspend the song in its own happiness. For those few seconds, dance becomes more than what joy inspires. It becomes joy itself.
3) ‘DANCE…’ – Slayyyter
The controversial rising star opens the song with a near-absurdly long build-up, the kind of thing that would make The 20/20 Experience-era Justin Timberlake proud, before dropping into a bass-heavy electronic beat. As Slayyyter brushes off fake smiles and people determined to spoil her night, the production offers its own kind of escape. The bassline initially skips along in an almost playful rhythm, before climbing into a sharper, record-scratch-like register in the second verse and sinking back down, now fuller and warmer, as though the bass itself has come alive. There’s a looseness to the way the sound shifts and develops, bringing a sense of uninhibited pleasure to a song about refusing to let other people ruin your night.
2) ‘Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore’ – Tinashe
After years of being overlooked by an industry that has never quite known what to do with her, Tinashe sounds utterly untouchable on ‘Nobody Wanna Dance Anymore’, carrying herself with the kind of confidence that makes everyone else’s opinion feel irrelevant. The beat is insouciant, but there’s something almost unfair about it, as though it’s been designed for Tinashe and Tinashe alone. You want to join in, but the longer you listen, the more you realise that dancing to it and dancing to it like Tinashe are two very different things. Some songs make you feel like the star of the dance floor. This one reminds you that you’ll never be her.
1) ‘Dancing’ – Jorja Smith
Built around a buoyant, percussion-led beat, the song has a mesmerising pull, the kind that makes you feel music as though for the first time. There’s something almost hypnotic about the way it draws you in, wrapping itself around your heart before you’ve even realised you’ve been caught. ‘I know that you want this’ lands like a vampire’s compulsion, and we, the hopeless souls who dared to look into her eyes, are powerless to resist.