The Cool vs The Cheese
"We definitely don't want any cliché cheesy stuff......Bruno Mars, Journey, Bieber....although his new one is actually pretty good surprisingly....no Bon Jovi or any bro rock really. What's the one where everyone gets low on the ground but the singer is like, 'a little bit softer now'? OH Shout. Definitely not that one. Our tastes are more Sylvan Esso, LCD Soundsystem, St. Vincent, Fleet Foxes, or like classic Talking Heads, Clash, Lou Reed, Bowie, Patti Smith. We definitely don't want any top 40 cheese."
Music is personal and it can often evoke even a sense identity for people. Well....duh. That's where we get punks, hipsters, skids, gangstas.....chances are if you see any of these people on the street, you can guess what's in their earbuds.
There's a great scene in This is 40 where Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann are trying to control the radio. He is trying to "educate" his family on what good music is via The Pixies when at a certain point Leslie Mann says "This music doesn't make people happy."
She goes on to switch the station to one that's playing Aha's classic 80's jam "Take On Me". This might be a good a metaphor for your party and you may want to re-think the Lou Reed. Let's talk about goals:
Is your goal to play music that you like at your wedding?
OR
Is your goal to have a great party (ie. ties on heads, dancing till the wee hours)?
I think put into this context, the choice becomes obvious. This is also a win for your band as they'll probably know more about rocking the party than your favourite songs. Although, perhaps there's a middle ground here....
When we began Side One, our thought was to try to find a middle ground between the cool and the cheese. We try to approach our core repertoire with the idea of keeping the dance floor rocking but not selling our souls too much and 2000 events later, we've got a pretty good idea about how to ride that line and when to burn the jets a little harder in one direction or the next. It really all depends on the crowd, but generally even the most high-brow, hipster, music snob is going to prefer Flo Rida's Timber or Nikki Minaj's Starships at midnight with their dress shirt off, arm in arm with their best friends, with a cocktail spilling onto the dance floor. Clichés are clichés for a reason. Dance floors respond to fun, recognizable, dancey music and that usually ends up pulling from the same well. If you check out most cover bands songlists, you'll see the same 100 songs. Side One doesn't have a songlist as our approach is slightly different.
We keep data on every event that we do, including recordings, videos, and detailed reports that we breakdown after each event. We also ask all of our clients to make us a list of requests before their event and to be clear, this is a list from scratch. They are not choosing from a list of songs that we give them. This serves 2 purposes:
We get an unprompted sense of your tastes and style. We want to include this as much as we think will work in our custom setlist that we bring to your event although, we may need to abandon this plan if your crowd is responding to something else.
Your requests go into a bigger database that we keep on requests and we look to see if there's any songs that "spike". Over the years, we've seen the sudden resurgence of certain older songs due to a TV show or movie (I Wanna Dance With Somebody - Whitney Houston, Mr Brightside - The Killers, Come and Get Your Love - Redbone, Dancing in the Moonlight - King Harvest, You Make My Dreams Come True - Hall & Oates, September - EWF, Wonderwall - Oasis, etc.) or songs that are new on the charts and maybe worth learning for us.
Here's some dance songs that surprisingly DON'T work often times:
You Can Call Me Al - Paul Simon
Once in a Lifetime - Talking Heads
Shape of You - Ed Sheehan (used to work, but has lost its charm on most audiences)
24K Magic and That's What I Like - Bruno Mars
Canned Heat or Cosmic Girl - Jamiroquai
Desire and most U2 songs - U2
Fantasy - Mariah Carey
Give it Away - Red Hot Chili Peppers
Kids - MGMT
Let's Dance - David Bowie
Problem - Arianna Grande
The Way You Make Me Feel - Michael Jackson
Umbrella - Rihanna
Valerie - Amy Winehouse
Buffalo Soldier - Bob Marley
1901 - Phoenix
A-Punk - Vampire Weekend
Domino - Van Morrison
What's Up - 4 Non Blondes
Dancing on my Own - Robyn (I know....this seems crazy)
It Ain't Me - Selena Gomez
Sweet Nothing - Calvin Harris ft. Florence Welch
Lights - Ellie Goulding
Higher Love - Whitney Houston & Kygo
There's several reasons why a song might empty a dance floor, but controlling for most variables (gender, age, soberiety, guest count, surrounding songs, bar in the foyer rather than the ballroom, etc.) these ones are examples of songs that tank in the best of conditions. The last 5, Erin and I have an attribute that we came up with that both of these songs share. We call it "the darkness". These 4 songs were both big top 40 songs for their time and all went to number 1 except the Robyn song, which has enjoyed renaissance of its own in pop culture since its release. They are all clearly "dance" tunes, in fact they would both be considered EDM (electronic dance music) classics. That said, when we used to play them when they were at their most popular, they would empty our dance floor. I think we can think back to the Leslie Mann quote from This is 40, "This music doesn't make people happy." These songs have a dark, minor overtone to them that is pretty melancholic. We had to learn for ourselves to spot the songs with "the darkness" and not that every song needs to be a sappy, pop, happy song ala "Barbie Girl" but we are pretty savvy now in spotting what will work.
Lastly. YOU are not the only one at your event. If there's 150 people there, that's 150 opinions on what the band should be playing. It is selfish to only cater to your tastes and force them on your guests so try although we like to get a sense of your personal style, think more generally about your crowd too. Keep in mind, maybe Grandma is more Tupac than Biggie. :)