100 Greatest Dance Songs

A suggested alternate title for Slant's 100 Greatest Dance Songs was "100 Greatest Dance Songs (Disco to Eternity)," but since we're prone to changing our minds frequently and since dance music is one of the most quickly evolving genres, time-stamping itself like 54-era polyester pants and shiny Limelight-era, uh, polyester shirts, we decided that "eternity" was a bit too set-in-stone. The multi-tiered selection process was fairly democratic, but many of our personal favorites—songs that are near and dear to our dancing shoes—fell by the wayside. Here's a shortlist of some of those omissions:

Paula Abdul, "Vibeology" (Ed)
Amber, "Yes!" (Sal)
Björk, "Violently Happy" (Sal)
Kerri Chandler, "Rain" (Eric)
Daft Punk, "Musique" (Eric)
Samantha Fox, "Love House" (Sal)
Evelyn King, "I'm In Love" (Rich)
Cheryl Lynn, "Star Love" (Eric)
Madonna, "Erotica" (Ed)
Jamie Principle, "Your Love" (Rich)
Stevie B, "In My Eyes" (Rich)
Danny Tenaglia, "Elements" (Ed)

Memorable Quotes From The Selection Process:

Countless emails and messages were circulated throughout the arduous selection process. The emails were mostly informative and insightful, sometimes infuriating and self-important, but almost always funny as shit…at least to us. We've picked out the best ones for your reading pleasure:

"Let me preface this email with a quote from Greg Tate's anti-Cold Mountain article 'Blacked Out' from The Village Voice a few years ago: 'My sisters overlook the more earthly, progressive romance between Juliette Binoche's army nurse and Naveen Andrews's Indian demolition expert, but since movies intend to work on the body and nervous system like music, critical responses to them never have to be rational or evenhanded. We all respond to movies based on our subject positions, and our own dark pasts demand to be heard from.'"

"The black men [Björk has] fucked have more right to be on this list than she does."

"I was chatting with Sal last night and he came up with the ideal opening statement for the article. I can't quote it verbatim, but it went something along the lines of: 'This article is about the Greatest Dance Songs, not the Greatest Dance Songs in Eric Henderson's CD Collection.'"

"Call me old-fashioned, but I like beats."

"Do you guys remember La Tour's 'People Are Still Having Sex'?"
"I do. And I wasn't, at the time."

"Maybe I just associate 'Got To Be Real' with unhappy afternoons with Jenny Jones."

"I just feel like I've heard ['I Will Survive'] so much, it's irrelevant. It doesn't need our mention."

"So basically all disco sucks unless it was produced by Moroder."

"I won't be happy with ['The Pleasure Principle'] as the song sounds like someone vomiting into my mouth and telling me I'm a fun-hatah for spitting it out, but Janet isn't worth Mariah-level hystrio-discourse."

"As Orwell wrote, some remixes are more equal than others."

"If you can't dance AND fuck to it (which includes ironic dry humping), it probably ain't no good..."

"Call me whatever you want ("faggy" is a good place to start, as always)…"

"Do you like 'Erotica'? I can't imagine a list like this without one track from the bitch's one fag underground album..."

"Who is Armond White?"

"I think, and Tyra Banks might agree, that there's an art to listmaking."

"Sojourner Truth, ladies and gentlemen..."

"Who are you, Christina Crawford?"

"I don't know if you know this but Sal is allergic to even numbers. Tonight, I saw this really bad movie, The Thing About My Folks. Peter Falk, who's getting inexplicable Oscar buzz for his performance, farts every 20 minutes in the film. After the third time, I knew Sal would probably love it."

"If Stacey Q recorded five of the greatest dance songs in history, they all deserve to be on our list otherwise the title of the list is a lie."

"If marriage is only between a man and a woman, then a song has to have singing in it."

"But Sal, dance music makes the people come together!"

"It's going to sound super fake if I'm pontificating on Chicago house's femme/butch binary as though it's just some ordinary conversation. Believe it or not, when I open my mouth, a pocket protector does not fall out."

"So, I think the schism isn't tight vs. loose anymore. It's dance music that takes it to church vs. dance music that takes it to the pansex bathroom."

"The reason I nominated 'Tainted Love' is because I heard it on the radio and for some reason it just sounded EXCELLENT on my clock radio."

"I moderately objected to runner-up votes placing certain songs above similar songs I had already given my unmitigated love to, as though I and a friend were held at knifepoint and then told by the assailant to choose whose balls he would presently cut off. I mean, obviously I'm going to say, 'Hey, what's that over there?' and then run away, leaving whatever poor sucker was unlucky enough to be my friend that night behind to have his balls cut off...Am I totally alone on that?"

"Don't make me retract my vote. I'll do it."
"So do it. You'll just have to vote for something else you probably don't like."

"Picture an episode of The Golden Girls where Blanche loses her cool and takes her frustration out on Rose, and when Rose gets that wounded look on her face, Blanche immediately gets really really southern and is all "Oh, hunnnn-ay, I'm so soh-ray, I didn't mean that!" That's sort of how I feel lately about this whole project. Except I'm Dorothy, watching from the sidelines and silently judging. Always judging. A dumb cunt. Fuck, I can even taste the cheesecake curdling in my goddamned mouth."

"I brought up the fact that we're still hashing this list out to my [co-worker] last night, and he looked at me funny and quipped, 'They wrote the Federalist Papers faster than you guys with this list!'"

"[Joe Bataan's] 'The Bottle' made me feel like I was strolling the produce aisle at the supermarket."

"My mom just bought $350 worth of meat from a door-to-door salesman."

"This is the most important list Slant has ever done or will ever do."