Just can't stop not dancin'!

June 5, 2007 7:35 PM

I want to make a compilation of songs that are absolutely impossible to dance to. The odder the meter, the more disconcerting the time changes, the better. I want songs so undanceable-to that they would leave even Dave Brubeck and Jaco Pastorius staring uncomfortably at their feet, wondering where the punchbowl was.

I'm not looking for avant-garde, experimental, outsider or noise music, so ixnay on the Jandek or the Merzbow. I'm more interested in accessible, but awkward tunes like the Stranglers' "Golden Brown," the Verve Pipe's "Bittersweet Symphony," "Dear Mr. Jesus" and the like.

posted by freshwater_pr0n to media & arts (73 comments total)

the melvins.
posted by cellphone at 7:39 PM on June 5, 2007

I've always heard that the hardest song to dance to is Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody.
posted by Octoparrot at 7:42 PM on June 5, 2007

I think I heard once that the Magnetic Fields' "Love is Like a Bottle of Gin" was written specifically with un-danceability in mind. Don't quote me on that.
posted by jacobm at 7:43 PM on June 5, 2007

UFO Tofu by Béla Fleck and the Flecktones. Actually, there are probably a lot of Fleck tunes that would work.
posted by danb at 7:48 PM on June 5, 2007

Ooh, Turtle Rock is an even better one.
posted by danb at 7:50 PM on June 5, 2007

"Hide and Seek" by Imogen Heap. Beat? What beat?
posted by smackfu at 7:51 PM on June 5, 2007

Seek out a genre of music called "math rock" - named for its playing with odd time signatures.

Someone was pointing out yesterday that David Bowie's "Let's Dance" is really hard to dance to.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:54 PM on June 5, 2007

They're Here - Bela Fleck and the Flecktones

Happiness Is a Warm Gun - The Beatles

anything by Dream Theater
posted by Jaltcoh at 7:55 PM on June 5, 2007

Eleven, by Primus.
posted by bondcliff at 7:58 PM on June 5, 2007

See, a steady odd time signature can be really danceable. Balkan folk music has all kinds of dance tunes in eleven and thirteen — and they're the sort of thing that big crowds of people at wedding receiptions and such will get up and rock out to.

Something like Happiness is a Warm Gun, where the meter and tempo change too often to keep pace, is probably a better bet. In the same vein, I'd suggest TMBG's Fingertips.
posted by nebulawindphone at 8:01 PM on June 5, 2007

Ahh, Golden Brown. Thank you, _pr0n, and thank you, iTunes.
posted by carterk at 8:08 PM on June 5, 2007

Rhapsody in Blue
The Planets: Mars
posted by SPrintF at 8:08 PM on June 5, 2007

Police drummer Stewart Copeland once put a warning on one of his records: "Dancing to this record will give you an agile body and healthy mind, but it won't be easy." The album was The Equalizer and Other Cliffhangers.
posted by kindall at 8:10 PM on June 5, 2007

First thing that comes to mind is Peaches En Regalia by Frank Zappa. If you're looking for something harder, The Dance Of Eternity by Dream Theater works.

That said, I can think of a TON of jazz that fits what you want. Sketches of Spain by Miles Davis immediately comes to mind. If you want something a bit more accessible in jazz, check out Still Life (Talking) or The Way Up by Pat Metheny Group -- both very guitar oriented and can be very upbeat (Still Life is full of very brazilian oriented jazz) while being completely impossible to dance to ;)
posted by daeken at 8:14 PM on June 5, 2007

Check out Don Ellis a jazz trumpeter who never had his band play in 4/4 (his version of the French Connection Theme is a good example...)
posted by ob at 8:14 PM on June 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

My household rock guy says:
"Anything off of Low's first three albums will be undanceable because ....tooo......sloooow....

The band June of '44 might fit?"

Here's a start on math rock, with a list of bands at the bottom. Here's the last.fm page for math rock; there's some June of 44 on there.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:15 PM on June 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

Most of Primus' catalogue seems to be what you're after.

Wynona's Big Brown Beaver would fit the bill, but there is plenty more.
posted by TheOtherGuy at 8:16 PM on June 5, 2007

Dancing to Lambchop's "D. Scott Parsley" without knowing the song really well would look kind of silly I imagine.

jacobm: I believe the unusual time signature in "Love Is Like A Bottle Of Gin" is actually formulated specifically for The Madison. Sounds a lot like something Mr. Merritt would do.
posted by ktrey at 8:17 PM on June 5, 2007

Happy the Man.
posted by jet_silver at 8:17 PM on June 5, 2007

Specifically, the misleadingly-titled The Dance of Eternity by Dream Theater, which is completely impossible to dance to.
posted by Khalad at 8:18 PM on June 5, 2007

And wow, here's a wikipedia page of musical works in unusual time signatures. As nebulawindphone points out, some of these will be perfectly danceable, but still might be cool to check out. There is a category for songs with multiple weird time signatures in a single song; that might fit your needs better.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:21 PM on June 5, 2007

4'33"
Possibly undanceable. Possibly completely and utterly danceable.
posted by yohko at 8:29 PM on June 5, 2007 [3 favorites]

Bjork must have something that fits the bill, but the first one I thought of ("It's oh so quiet") just has weird transitions with danceable parts in between.
posted by LobsterMitten at 8:33 PM on June 5, 2007

Merzbow
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 8:36 PM on June 5, 2007

If you enjoy irony, put in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

Aphex Twin "Come to Daddy"
posted by Nelson at 8:38 PM on June 5, 2007

Dream Theatre!

(and most prog rock)
posted by rhoticity at 8:47 PM on June 5, 2007

Autechre's Anti EP has the track Flutter, which circumvents UK's anti-rave law by featuring non-repetitive beats. It's electronic music's penultimate anti-dance dance track.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 8:52 PM on June 5, 2007

"Butter the Soul" by Cornershop.
posted by deern the headlice at 8:58 PM on June 5, 2007

To me, garage is utterly undanceable.
"Nobody Don't Dance No More" by Kano.
posted by Methylviolet at 9:05 PM on June 5, 2007

'Golden Brown' is eminently danceable; the trick is to treat it a bit like a gavotte, with a little step or hop in there.

Sky's 'Dance of the Little Fairies' is harder.
posted by Pinback at 9:05 PM on June 5, 2007

The Impossible Dancing Song by Fatcat and Fishface.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 9:06 PM on June 5, 2007

Seconding Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody." At the height of its Wayne's World popularity, some friends and I requested it at a wedding just to see if people would get on the dance floor. They did, but halfway through the song things got very awkward out there.
posted by bluishorange at 9:11 PM on June 5, 2007

Magazine's "Motorcade" rocks but has a habit of changing tempo that I bet would make it a little difficult to dance to. It's one of my favorite songs, but I'd refrain from putting it on a dance party mix, tell you what.

My dad made a party tape that had "Helen Fordsdale" as the last song so people would get uncomfortable and leave. He used the tape enough that I'd think to myself "mm, here comes Helen" when it came on. Might be too noisy for you, but I (as a resident of my dad's home from age 0 to 18) think of it as normal music.
posted by crinklebat at 9:26 PM on June 5, 2007

>04TA40/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-1109213-0348769?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1181104241&sr=8-1">"Ascension" by John Coltrane
posted by bokinney at 9:31 PM on June 5, 2007

Whoops, that link pasted weird. Here it is again.
posted by bokinney at 9:32 PM on June 5, 2007

Másfél. Soilent Green. Crass. Melt Banana. sunn O))). Ruins. Painkiller. Dillinger Escape Plan.
posted by milquetoast at 9:40 PM on June 5, 2007

What's wrong with asking Dave Brubeck for some help?

Unsquare Dance, by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. 7/4, but not the same 7/4 from one measure to the next. Sounds like 3/4 at points, then the "bhoys" syncopate to 4/4. Or not. And at only 2:03, there's the "Ready, Fire, Aim!" problem for dancers to contend with.

Hilarity will ensue.
posted by paulsc at 9:45 PM on June 5, 2007

The Shaggs - My Pal Foot-Foot

Derek Bailey?

Cecil Taylor?

Plenty of Beefheart, too. Man, there are whole genres that fit this question.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:47 PM on June 5, 2007

My bad, those are all experimental outsider or avant garde.

Shoulda read it all.
posted by Joseph Gurl at 9:51 PM on June 5, 2007

Beatles - "A Day in the Life" strikes me as something hard to dance to.

OutKast - "A Life in the Day of Benjamin André" seems impossible even with out a time change.

Bowie - "oh you pretty things" The verses would be hard.

I want to say some old dylan when it is just him and his guitar would be hard due to the fact that he was kinda just keeping time with himself. for instance "the lonesome death of hattie carol" would be a painfully slow waltz.

Iron and Wine songs might make for some painfully slow songs and with no drums it kinda hurts to try and dance to it.

Flaming lips - Yoshimi battles the pick robots part two

I hit the jackpot with The White Stripes. Jack White likes to change songs in the middle of other songs. He changes tempo at will. Some of his live tracks would be brutal mash up of 4 or more songs. Some parts vocal only.

Pixies - Mr. Grieves

I feel like sonic youth might be a good place to look.

System of a Down loves time and tempo changes. Chop Suey anyone?

The velvet underground's Heroin speeds up through out most of the song and slows back down. It is pretty jarring. They are a pretty good band overall when looking for this kinda thing.
posted by magikker at 9:51 PM on June 5, 2007

...I'm sorry. I, too, did not catch the [more inside] part. Please disregard.
posted by milquetoast at 9:56 PM on June 5, 2007

group dancing to Brubeck's "Unsquare Dance"
posted by alikins at 9:57 PM on June 5, 2007

How about Dance On A Volcano by Genesis. Hard to dance to even with "dance" in the title. Maybe followed with "We Cant Dance". Which seems like it might actually be a bit painful to dance to itself.
posted by alikins at 10:08 PM on June 5, 2007

I didn't finish that comment. I bet you could dance to Merzbow if you really tried, at least some of it.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 10:22 PM on June 5, 2007

And of course, lots of Primus and 80's King Crimson is actually kind of funky, but not really danceable. For Primus, "Eleven" and "Welcome To This World" come to mind.

How about King Crimson's "Cat Food"? "Elephant Talk?"
(I've now used Elephant Talk as a askMeFi answer twice in less than a week...).
posted by alikins at 10:25 PM on June 5, 2007

So much goodness. I don't even know what to favorite. Please keep it coming. And please, try your damndest to keep dancing.
posted by freshwater_pr0n at 10:27 PM on June 5, 2007

Pink Floyd's Money? It's in 7/4, but steady enough that one could probably adjust. Jethro's Tull's Living in the Past -- in 5/4?
posted by treepour at 10:28 PM on June 5, 2007

If you want something that will really freak people out, throw on "Fabulous Muscles" by Xiu Xiu. It's two painfully slow to dance to, plus utterly creepy. It just makes people uncomfortable to hear it. Same with Xiu Xiu's cover of "Fast Car" by Tracy Chapman. You feel really really uncomfortable listening to it.
(Anecdotal: I saw them cover 'fast car' live once, and it was easily one of the most uncomfortable five minutes of my life. Their singer was lightly sobbing, and playing this breathy, creepy cover. I had a very very distinct feeling that "this is something I SHOULD NOT be witnessing" it was the combination of how uncomfortably personal it felt, plus the inherent discomfort in the way he plays the song. I'm shuddering right now.)

They can't dance to it, and they won't even feel like dancing for a good while afterward.
posted by The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew at 11:09 PM on June 5, 2007

"Hello from inside a shell" from Of Montreal
posted by Foam Pants at 11:41 PM on June 5, 2007

You know, any dancer accustomed to working with the changing rhythms in Egyptian classical music could handle most of those selections with aplomb.
posted by tangerine at 12:22 AM on June 6, 2007

Devo's "Jocko Homo." It switches from 7/8 time during the verses to traditional 4/4 for the choruses. I can barely clap along to it, but it's still a great song.
posted by waxpancake at 1:58 AM on June 6, 2007

Anything by Neil Diamond.
posted by wsg at 2:37 AM on June 6, 2007

Autechre's Flutter is totally danceable. It claims to have no repetitive beats, but that mostly just means when the time for a beat comes up you don't really know what's going to happen, but something will. Furthermore, a longer scale rhythm is maintained through the synth sound which IS very repetitive.

Anti is meant as dance music - it's supposed to be played at raves; to circumventing the Criminal Justice and Public Order act..
posted by aubilenon at 3:12 AM on June 6, 2007

One song, and one song only, immediately came to mind :

Fantomas - Delirium Corda.

Even if you could figure out a way to interpretively dance to that song, you'd be doing it for 74 mins straight.
posted by revmitcz at 3:38 AM on June 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Kate Bush has made a lot of great music that is as "undancable" as "Bittersweet Symphony" in that, well, you could only dance to it by swanning about to the melody only occasionally making a nod to the rhythm. In fact, I dare say that's her forte--making delicious pop music that's undancable (except for trained stage dancers and drunk goth girls). See Wuthering Heights, Running Up That Hill, Babooshka, Hounds of Love and damn near every song she's ever done.

See also "Ziggy Stardust" by David Bowie and then Bauhaus.

There's Vienna by Ultravox. Cream's White Room. Iron Butterfly's "In-a-Goda-Da-Vida" too long for you? White Rabbit (Smothers Brothers clip) would be a challenge. Stairway to Heaven?
posted by Martin E. at 4:16 AM on June 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Oh, I suppose Ceremony by New Order sounds dancy at first, but the only people who can really pull it off are 14-year-olds bouncing up and down on their beds. (and Galaxie 500 slow it right down and make it merely swayable (that live sound is awful, find the studio version).

Someone mentioned Low's early stuff (like Over the Ocean) as being undancable just for being so slow, but even later stuff like Monkey is, however catchy and regular, only good for tapping a foot and nodding. And the latest album (with Breaker is a little more out there and undancable).
posted by Martin E. at 4:33 AM on June 6, 2007

Backdrifts, by Radiohead. You'd look pretty funny trying to dance to that.
posted by bluenausea at 4:55 AM on June 6, 2007

The Birthday Party (Release the Bats) and Nick Cave (eg The Ship Song) have plenty of good tunes that would be nearly impossible to dance to.
posted by Martin E. at 5:03 AM on June 6, 2007

Helmet
posted by Otis at 6:17 AM on June 6, 2007

The "Neptune" movement of Gustav Holst's "The Planets". As described here:

Neptune - mystic and mysterious - is the astrologers connection to the otherworld. This piece also had a lot of dissonance, slow meters, mixed meters, harps, celesta, and a chorus of unseen women singing wordless melody. "Oh, when will it end," I wrote in my notebook. The symphony program tells us that Neptune is invisible to the naked eye. I think it was trying to hide from Holst!

I think it's pretty music, but would be difficult to dance to for sure. Except perhaps for modern dance.
posted by amtho at 6:38 AM on June 6, 2007

I would go with some glitch. Oval, Matmos, Nobukazu Takemora. Some of that stuff is totally with out a beat of any kind.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 6:48 AM on June 6, 2007

Ok, re-read the question. The stuff mentioned above is not accessible enough. Math rock is probably a better bet.
posted by Lazlo Hollyfeld at 6:50 AM on June 6, 2007

PedantFilter: "Bittersweet Symphony" is by The Verve, not The Verve Pipe.

That said, both of those bands aren't particularly known for danceable songs.
posted by greatgefilte at 7:01 AM on June 6, 2007

Both times I saw Faraquet live, I nearly broke my back trying to dance along. Check out the song "Cut Self Not" in particular.

Additionally, Faraquet, in their day, once recorded a split EP with a band called Akarso. The four songs that Akarso contributed to that record are some of the most aggresively undance-able tunes ever committed to wax. And they're awesome, to boot.

Some others, off the top of my head, are "The Static Cult" by Mohinder, which is too fast to successfully dance to, and "Deadly Rhythm" by The Refused; the name says it all.
posted by saladin at 7:17 AM on June 6, 2007

"Taxi" by Harry Chapin
posted by cadge at 8:00 AM on June 6, 2007

Nine Inch Nails: Perfect Drug has probably too many changes and rhythms to dance to, and they've quite a few other songs (like Gave Up that are catchy and rockin but impossible to dance to unless you're in a room full of dry ice and strobe lights.

Closer (StarTrek version!), however, has been very popular for people to dance to. Specifically young women swinging around polls in strip clubs.
posted by Martin E. at 9:49 AM on June 6, 2007

Wynton Marsalis' "Standard Time" album -- jazz standards re-interpreted with unique timing. Some are still danceable, but something like "Autumn Leaves" (track 11) starts slow and multiplies the time signature with each set of bars, all they way up to a fast bop tempo. It's impossible to dance to.

Also, Rush's YYZ.
posted by mrmcsurly at 10:00 AM on June 6, 2007

i'd vote for aphex twin's Bucephalus Bouncing Ball
posted by Soulbee at 10:55 AM on June 6, 2007

Soulbee: There's even Stepmania steps to Bucephalus Bouncing Ball. Sure it's 9 feet worth of difficulty, but other songs are harder.

Hint: if the [obnoxious, pretentions] name of the genre includes the word "dance" it's probably not undanceable.
posted by aubilenon at 3:36 PM on June 6, 2007

One of my favorite thing to see ever was a highschool football game where the Band played "Take the A Train" and the cheerleaders tried to dance along.
posted by Megafly at 4:35 PM on June 6, 2007

You have to use "Back in Judy's Jungle" from Brian Eno's second album, "Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy." He was still in his glam/prog phase, so it's a pop song rather than an ambient piece. It has a stuttered beat and keeps adding elements. It would be quite awkward to dance to.

Also, you may want to consider some cuts from the Fiery Furnaces' "Blueberry Boat" album.
posted by waltzing astronomers at 12:17 AM on June 8, 2007

Todd Rundgren's version of 'Cool Jerk' is done in a bizarre time signature.
posted by adamkempa at 2:08 PM on June 22, 2007

I may be a month late to this party, but I just have to mention "Breaking Ribs for Tom Thayer" by Volta do Mar.
posted by saladin at 12:46 PM on July 12, 2007