Day 117: Get Low
Maybe it’s just me, but why is it that no one actually dances to dance music? There’s an entire genre of music built from the ground to make you want to dry hump everything and everyone around you, but no actual dance music is played at parties. Music made by DJs, whose job it is to make people want to dance, is routinely ignored.
Maybe it’s the Midwest. We don’t have the sorts of clubs where new music is made. Lil’ Jon and Britney Spears aren’t going to bring the newest mixes from the studios to see how people like them to anyplace in Indiana.
If you put the music on, people get disgusted, roll their eyes and mutter to everyone in particular, “ugh, techno.”
Except, it’s not techno in the strictest sense, and most rap songs about getting drunk and rubbing up against strippers use more manufactured sounds and loops than practically any genre of music. So it can’t possibly be the beat itself.
It’s the goddamn chorus. It’s a unifying event. We all know the words. We’ve all heard the song before. We listen to the same radio stations, and watch the same shows on TV. You’re alright; I’m alright, and according to everyone nodding and smiling, this song is alright. Let’s all be right together.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that, God knows I love screaming ‘Hey Jude’ with all my friends after fifteen beers. Many of my favorite memories involve everyone knowing all the words to a song, the smell of whiskey in the air, and the floor slick with cheap beer.
I just want to know why, what, and where. Why this song? What makes it click with all of us? And where’s the line?
Why can’t I dance to the Teddy Bears, scream along to ‘Brown Eyed Girl,’ grind to Girl Talk, and then drunkenly tell my best friends that I love them during the closing chords of ‘the Gang’s All Here?’ Not one after the other, but is it too much to hope that over the course of four or five hours we can hit all the dance/scream/grind/love notes?
Matt