Dance to the Music - Sly and the Family Stone

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jn2PNlhvy8E]

This song and other contemporaries like it were, in my opinion, precursors to club dance hits we have seen go big in recent years. Songs like "Cha Cha Slide" and "Cupid Shuffle," both of which instruct the listener on the dance moves for the song, had songs like this one to use as building blocks. That's not exactly what the lyrics in this classic are doing, but the breakdown of the song, showcasing only the drums and vocals, still has that same vibe. Another piece of the musical puzzle here is the a capella sections of the song. While it's pretty common today to hear that kind of thing in pop music, it was quite the opposite when "Dance" was released. The group really paved the way for a lot of music we hear today.

The song was released as a way to bring Sly and the Family Stone in to the mainstream music scene. Their style, which was dubbed psychedelic soul, was not something that was getting a lot of radio play outside of the smaller market. The group wasn't fond of the song or the idea of producing something more pop-centric. It was Clive Davis, their label exec, who insisted on something more commercial for their 1967 release, A Whole New Thing. The song accomplished its goal for sure, becoming the group's first major hit, taking the #8 spot on the Hot 100.