Let's Dance!

I have been busy these past few days trying to finalize my top ten dance songs for the dance party I am going to on Saturday. I wrote about it in this post back in April. Friends of mine are having a dance party to christen their new hardwood floors and they have asked each of their invitees to bring their top ten dance songs.

This is hard to do...come up with your 10 best dance songs. I either go crazy and end up with 18 songs or get incredibly picky and only have 6 that I really truly love. I spent some time on Saturday and tried to compile and finalize my list. I started with my 10 from April and put them into a playlist on my computer and listened to them. Right away I eliminated 3 which meant having to pick 3 more and then I found about 9 more that I loved and listened to them and eliminated 4 and then had to pare it down and then cut out too many and had to find more. This went on until I went out Saturday night.

Then something great/awful happened. My best friend JM, donated his 10 songs to me. He is super busy with work and studying and band practice and so he let me have his 10 picks. Initially, I thought this was the greatest thing ever! Now I don't have to pare down my list. But the thing is that I want to pick the 20 greatest dance songs that I can possibly pick. I want every single song to get a great reaction. I want each song to start and for at least half the party to be happy and keep dancing.

Sunday, I sat at my computer and went through all of my playlists and if I thought it might be a good dance song I added it to a new dance list. At the end of that exercise I had 42 songs. I went through that list, listening to the first 30 seconds of each song and easily eliminated 15 songs. The back and forth of eliminating and adding started again and an hour later I had a pretty good list of about 22 songs. I considered sneaking in 22 songs but decided that I really wanted to find 20. It was a challenge now to get the best 20 songs.

This afternoon, I did one last run through of the list and pared it down to 20 songs and then played them on random while I cleaned and got ready for work. Each song made me happy and made me feel like dancing. I split the list in two and emailed JM his 10 songs for approval. He had the option to veto any song that he didn't want attached to his name for the dance party. He emailed back that he loved the songs, so we are good to go.

I haven't copied them to a cd yet because I want the freedom to change my mind in the next 5 days if I decide to. You never know what great new (or old) song you might discover or remember. Now to share my songs with other invitees so that we can avoid duplicates. It takes away from the element of surprise for any gems you have on your list but really we might have 18 copies of Scissor Sisters - Don't Feel Like Dancing, if we don't share.

So with no further adieu, here are my (and JM's) songs...

JM's
Jamiroquai - Little L
Scissor Sisters - Comfortably Numb
Robbie Williams - Rock DJ
Will Smith - Will2K
Cake - Love You Madly
Tom Jones f. The Cardigans - Burning Down the House
The Pixies - Here Comes Your Man
Scissor Sisters - Take Your Momma Out
Jamiroquai - Love Foolosophy
New Order - Bizarre Love Triangle

KT's
Scissor Sisters - Don't Feel Like Dancing
Justin Timberlake - Rock Your Body
Will Smith - Getting Jiggy With It
Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence
Shakira - Hips Don't Lie
Madonna - Holiday
Wham - I'm Your Man
Jamiroquai - Canned Heat
REM - Pop Song 89
Mika - Relax, Take it Easy