[imagesource: Daniel Boczarski]

Sorry, I know boogie is the sort of thing that someone over the age of 60 would say.

Did you guys go to the disco and boogie? No, mom, we went to Tin Roof and made terrible life decisions. Stop embarrassing me!

There’s no way I could ever attempt to compile a ranking of the greatest dance songs of all time, due in large part to the fact that I don’t really listen to that genre.

Thankfully, Rolling Stone has gone balls to the wall with a truly mammoth effort – 200 dance songs, in order of greatness.

What is a dance song, you ask?

In a sense, any song that ever got any one person moving in any perceptible direction is a dance song. The Beatles made great dance songs — as did Slayer. Nearly all the hip-hop and reggae ever made is great dance music. But to make our list of The 200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time, a song had to be part of “dance music culture.” It’s a more specific world, but an enormous one too, going back nearly fifty years and eternally evolving right up to today and into the future.

Cool story, now let me cut loose these shackles and laat my tekkies brand.

I respect your time and mine, so I will list songs 10 through six and then pop in a music video for the top five.

• 10 – Disclosure feat. Sam Smith, ‘Latch’ (2013)
• Nine – Robin S., ‘Show Me Love’ (1992)
• Eight – On the House and Marshall Jefferson, ‘Move Your Body (The House Music Anthem)’ (1986)
• Seven – Robyn, ‘Dancing on My Own’ (2010)
• Six – Shannon, ‘Let the Music Play’ (1983)

I’m a little underwhelmed so far and hoping for a big finish.

Five – Indeep, ‘Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life’ (1982):

Dance music is full of one-shot hitmakers, chancers who caught a groove at the right time and rode it for everything they could. Indeep’s “Last Night a D.J. Saved My Life,” written by producer-musician Michael Cleveland and sung by the tart Reggi Magloire and sweet Rose Marie Ramsey, is one of the greatest examples…

On the nose for early 1980s and yeah, it’s a bit of a banger:

Four – Frankie Knuckles and Jamie Principle, ‘Your Love’ (1986):

Frankie Knuckles was already the most powerful DJ in mid-Eighties Chicago, and a burgeoning remixer, when he began to take record making seriously. “The turning point was Jamie Principle,” he said in 2011. The young singer-songwriter, convinced by the creativity of Knuckles’ DJ’ing, asked Frankie to produce him…

The result was “Your Love,” the pinnacle of house music’s heartfelt early years, created not in a studio, but in the DJ booth of Knuckles’ mid-Eighties club, the Power Plant.

I dunno, maybe you had to be there and be indulging in that marching powder synonymous with the ’80s.

Three – Chic, ‘Good Times’ (1979):

Disco’s greatest party anthem still gets anyone and everyone out on the floor. Chic’s 1979 classic instantly connects on every level — a lyric whose euphoria consistently undercuts itself, never becoming bland…

The string slices over Edwards’ extended bass solo made it irresistible to DJs (start with Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” and “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel”), rockers (Queen’s outright rip-off “Another One Bites the Dust”), and everybody else — numerous other tracks rewrote that bass line throughout the early Eighties.

I definitely recognise the beat:

Anything from this century? Here we go.

Two – Daft Punk, ‘One More Time’ (2000):

Daft Punk showed that house and techno could have elastic pop appeal with their classic 1997 debut, Homework, still the greatest dance-music album ever made. When Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo returned, they raised the stakes even higher with 2001’s Discovery and its rapturous lead single, “One More Time.”

It’s their most beloved track, piloting the filter-house thump of their previous music into a whole new stratosphere or triumphal pop excess and eventually becoming a platinum single in the U.S.

Daft Punk may be no more but this track will live on forever:

I’m legit enjoying this trip down memory lane now.

Big finish for number one, and… Donna Summer, ‘I Feel Love’ (1977):

The impetus was simple: For their fourth collaboration, Donna Summer and her producers Giorgio Moroder and Pete Belotte were making I Remember Yesterday, a pastiche of past musical styles, so to finish it off, they needed a track that would signify the future…

It’s simply impossible to imagine the future sound of dance music without it. “This is it — look no further,” Brian Eno said as he thrust this seven-inch single into David Bowie’s hand while they were working in Berlin in 1977. “This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next 15 years.”

It wouldn’t have been my pick but I can get behind it:

Other modern entries include Rihanna feat. Calvin Harris, ‘We Found Love’ (2011) in 16th, Kylie Minogue, ‘Can’t Get You Out of My Head’ (2001) in 20th, and DJ Snake feat. Lil Jon, ‘Turn Down for What’ (2013) in 22nd.

Fatboy Slim, ‘The Rockafeller Skank’ (1998), was 199th.

You can see the full list here.

[source:rollingtstone]