House party, BBQ, wedding party or just a bedroom disco, we have the party playlist you need to get the place moving.
You’re having a party, you say? Not sure what to cue up on your iPhone? Rest assured, we have you covered. In fact, we’re a little worried that our playlist of the 100 greatest party songs ever recorded by human beings may actually cause your dance floor to spontaneously combust in a firework explosion of pure joy and body-moving ecstasy. That’s how good we think it is.
Our criteria were simple: You hear the intro of the song, and you immediately go skidding toward the dance floor. Nothing less was acceptable. So of course, you’ll find tracks from big hitters like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Beyoncé. And there are one-hit-wonderful tracks galore: “Maniac” by Michael Sembello, “Here Comes the Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze and “Teach Me How to Dougie” by Cali Swag District, to name a few. There are songs your mom likes, songs your cool younger brother likes and above all, songs you like: Party hits so potent, they get you singing along in the supermarket, or air-punching when they come on your running mix at the gym.
In short: all killer, no filler. Let the revelry commence!
Our criteria were simple: You hear the intro of the song, and you immediately go skidding toward the dance floor. Nothing less was acceptable. So of course, you’ll find tracks from big hitters like Michael Jackson, Madonna and Beyoncé. And there are one-hit-wonderful tracks galore: “Maniac” by Michael Sembello, “Here Comes the Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze and “Teach Me How to Dougie” by Cali Swag District, to name a few. There are songs your mom likes, songs your cool younger brother likes and above all, songs you like: Party hits so potent, they get you singing along in the supermarket, or air-punching when they come on your running mix at the gym.
In short: all killer, no filler. Let the revelry commence!
100–91
Download Hall and Oates - 3 Albums (inc Greatest Hits) [FLAC] - Kitlope torrent or any other torrent from Audio > FLAC Direct download via magnet link. Jun 2, 2016 - I heard from the top live wedding band in California — all three of them. I received playlists. The top 359 songs accounted for just half of the plays. 26, Daryl Hall & John Oates, 48. Software testing engineer at ResMed. Download 1975 - Daryl Hall & John Oates. 1983 - Rock'n Soul Pt.1 (Greatest Hits Remastered): Download 1984. Of Season: Download 1997 - Best of Hall & Oates.
A boisterous, presumably bell-bottomed crowd, gyrating on the dance floor of your imagination, can be heard high in the mix. Take their whoops as your cue: Marvin Gaye supplies the cool falsetto and someone can be heard rocking the cowbell, but the prime directive here is to dance. When Paul Thomas Anderson needed a backdrop for Dirk Diggler’s glory days in Boogie Nights, this is what he chose.—Joshua Rothkopf
In early May, I asked FiveThirtyEight readers to send in their wedding reception set lists, and good God, did you deliver. I received 163 playlistsThe response was so great that I’m being a bit choosy with what we’re including here: I pulled playlists that have been played (or will be played) during the dance portion of a wedding reception. Thank you also to all the DJs who sent in their generic set list — I plan to write a separate story on that data.
'>1 with 9,281 songs among them.As a result, I’m pleased to introduce FiveThirtyEight’s ultimate wedding playlist, based on the most popular songs among the reception set lists people sent in:
Hall & Oates Greatest Hits List
SONG | SET LIST APPEARANCES | ||
---|---|---|---|
1 | Hey Ya! | 69 | |
2 | I Wanna Dance With Somebody | 57 | – |
3 | Uptown Funk | 55 | |
4 | Shout | 54 | – |
5 | Crazy In Love | 50 | |
6 | Don’t Stop Believin’ | 45 | – |
7 | Billie Jean | 44 | |
7 | Get Lucky | 44 | – |
7 | Twist and Shout | 44 | |
10 | Shut Up and Dance | 43 | – |
11 | September | 41 | |
11 | Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough | 41 | – |
13 | Yeah! | 40 | |
14 | I Want You Back | 39 | – |
14 | You Make My Dreams | 39 | |
16 | Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours) | 38 | – |
17 | Sweet Caroline | 36 | |
18 | Happy | 34 | – |
18 | We Found Love | 34 | |
20 | Call Me Maybe | 33 | – |
20 | Ignition (Remix) | 33 |
Before we dive into the data, let’s go back to those responses, because they were really something else. There were winery weddings and ski lodge weddings, destination weddings and barn weddings. There were big weddings, small weddings, straight weddings, same-sex weddings, secular weddings and big church weddings. I heard from the top live wedding band in California — all three of them. I received playlists designed for Polish weddings, Indian weddings, French-Canadian weddings and Brazilian weddings, along with the necessary musical additions for weddings in Buffalo, New York. I heard from someone who distributed my analysis of the proper rate of descent during “Shout” at his nuptials, which was pretty rad. I had someone send me “The Rains of Castamere” from an anonymous email account, which as a “Game of Thrones” nut I should have seen coming. One person sent me a 20-song playlist composed entirely of “Rock Lobster,” which is a far longer song than you likely recall. My heart was warmed by all the stories that couples sent in and then re-frosted when I saw how few of them played “Danza Kuduro.”
And the variety of responses really came through in the data. Even though the list of the most popular overall songs suggests a consensus, there was far from total homogeneity. There were 3,358 unique songs in this set. The top 359 songs accounted for just half of the plays. The point: Wedding playlists consist of a core of songs that appear very regularly, plus several more unusual songs that are informed by the choices of the couple and — based on what people told me in their emails — the often emphatic recommendations of family.
It’s very much the same way with the artists:
ARTIST | SET LIST APPEARANCES | ||
---|---|---|---|
1 | Michael Jackson | 202 | – |
2 | Beyoncé | 130 | |
3 | The Beatles | 120 | – |
4 | Stevie Wonder | 108 | |
5 | Outkast | 94 | – |
6 | Queen | 88 | |
7 | Rihanna | 85 | – |
8 | Van Morrison | 74 | |
9 | The Jackson 5 | 73 | – |
10 | Justin Timberlake | 71 | |
10 | Whitney Houston | 71 | – |
12 | Daft Punk | 69 | |
13 | Prince | 64 | – |
14 | Pitbull | 63 | |
15 | Lady Gaga | 59 | – |
15 | Mark Ronson | 59 | |
15 | Usher | 59 | – |
18 | Journey | 58 | |
19 | The Isley Brothers | 57 | – |
20 | Elvis Presley | 52 | |
21 | Earth, Wind & Fire | 50 | – |
21 | Frank Sinatra | 50 | |
21 | Kanye West | 50 | – |
21 | The Temptations | 50 | |
25 | The Rolling Stones | 49 | – |
26 | Daryl Hall & John Oates | 48 | |
26 | Madonna | 48 | – |
28 | David Bowie | 47 | |
29 | Jay Z | 46 | – |
30 | Flo Rida | 45 | |
30 | Taylor Swift | 45 | – |
32 | Walk the Moon | 44 | |
33 | Katy Perry | 43 | – |
33 | Sam Cooke | 43 | |
35 | R. Kelly | 42 | – |
36 | Billy Joel | 40 | |
36 | LMFAO | 40 | – |
36 | Neil Diamond | 40 | |
39 | The Black Eyed Peas | 39 | – |
40 | The B-52s | 38 | |
41 | Bruce Springsteen | 37 | – |
41 | Kesha | 37 | |
43 | Carly Rae Jepsen | 36 | – |
44 | Elton John | 35 | |
44 | Miley Cyrus | 35 | – |
44 | Missy Elliott | 35 | |
47 | Notorious B.I.G. | 34 | – |
47 | The Beach Boys | 34 | |
47 | The Cure | 34 | – |
Michael Jackson appears most often, but even that understates his essential role in wedding dance parties given that the Jackson 5 are No. 9 on the list.
Just as important as the stuff that gets played, though, is the material that couples make unambiguously clear will not be played under any circumstances. We didn’t get “do not play” lists from everyone, so take this with a grain of salt, but a few trends appeared. Line dances are a big presence: Guess some people got burned by the “Cha-Cha Slide” and don’t want to mentally go back there. Other polarizing songs include Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” “Sweet Caroline” and the detestable “Blurred Lines,” as well as the entire catalogs of Dave Matthews Band,Good call!
'>2 Maroon 5Good call!'>3 and the Village People.What the hell, Brendan?'>4 Hey, it’s your party.There are several distinct eras evident in the data. You’ve got your Motown and oldies: “Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I’m Yours),” by Stevie Wonder; “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” by Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell; and “At Last,” by Etta James. There are hits from the 1970s and 1980s, including Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September,” Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” — the song with the most interesting popularity trajectory in pop musicWhen I was reporting on trends in classic rock two years ago — a thoroughly subjective genre when you get down to it and an exercise not entirely dissimilar to this one — a programming director told me that “Don’t Stop Believin’” jumped from barely played to one of the most in-demand songs on terrestrial radio since the mid-2000s thanks largely to the series finale of “The Sopranos.” It went from bench warmer to star player lightning quick. My favorite metric to show this is to look at the song’s placement on the annual ranking of the top 1,043 rock songs put together by New York’s classic rock station WAXQ (104.3 FM). In 2004, the song was ranked 485thon the list. By 2011, it had moved up to 75th. Obviously, the 1981 song itself did not change between 2004 and 2011. We did!
'>5 — and the B-52s’ “Love Shack.” There’s a robust contemporary contingent — “Uptown Funk,” “Shut Up and Dance,” “Happy” and “Shake It Off” are hot right now — plus some established modern icons, including “Get Lucky,” “Ignition (Remix),” “Hey Ya!,” “Single Ladies” and “Yeah!”
One thing this data doesn’t tell us is how wedding playlists have changed over the decades. When new songs join the canon every year, we don’t extend receptions to accommodate them: There’s a finite amount of dance floor time, and all we’ve got is a snapshot here. Still, I am endlessly curious about how these generic set lists would change over time.
List Of Hall & Oates Songs
My first thought was that different songs get phased out survival-of-the-fittest style. In 10 years’ time, perhaps “Low” will be the sole vestige of 2007, and its contemporaries — “Cupid Shuffle,” “Paper Planes” and “Electric Feel” — will be lost to time. But then I saw the distribution of release years, and I contrived a new theory.
Hall & Oates Hit Songs
There are peaks centering on the mid-1960s, the early 1980s and (obviously) the last few years. Now, I don’t have any hard proof for this theory besides [expressively waves hand at that chart], but here’s what I think is causing the funky trimodal distribution above: Everyone at the wedding — the couple, their parents, their parents’ parents — gets a few songs from when they were in their late teens and early 20s. Let’s do some back-of-the-napkin math. According to the U.S. census, the median age at first marriage for the bride is about 27, so for a 2016 wedding, we can approximate that she was born around 1989. That means her parents would have gotten married in the late 1980s — let’s just say 1986. Mom would have been 22 or so back then based on the census data, which would place her birth around 1964. That would put the 2016 bride’s grandparents’ wedding around the early 1960s, when the median marriage age for women was 20.
So it isn’t so much that “‘Uptown Funk’ will be absent from weddings within 10 years,” but rather “‘Uptown Funk’ may be absent from weddings within 10 years, but it could make a hell of a comeback in 25 years when the 2016 couple’s offspring starts getting married.”
In the end, receptions are another reflection of the whole point of weddings: starting something new and uncertain and kind of frightening, but beginning it in something traditional and established and fundamentally familiar. As the old saying goes, “something old, something new, something borrowed, to the window, to the wall, ’til the sweat … [redacted],” or some crap like that.
The top 200 are here: