List of lyrical dance songs holiday series#

The British producer paid homage to his Nigerian roots with this slinky, smooth, funkadelic grinder, basing the beat around a traditional vocal sample that his friend tipped him off to after a trip to Kenya. For TroyBoi, the connection is a little more direct. VALERIE LEEĪll hail mother Africa, the place from which all human life began. With its punchy, powerful kick drums and sparkling synths in the driver’s seat, “Jeanette” thus packs an emotional punch while dually serving as a sort of catharsis. Welsh producer Kelly Lee Owens delivered a sophisticated slice of cerebral IDM with “Jeanette,” from her August sophomore LP, Inner Song. The song, like the rest of the album, is the product of a challenging few years in which Owens experienced a breakup, the passing of her grandfather and the generalized anxieties of the time. But when 15 seconds of booty-shaking stretch to a full-length track, the vibe, if you will, doesn’t always endure. Enter Tyga, who’s wise not to overshadow Kawaii’s and producer Alteriek “TrillzAl” Williams’s musical gluteal bounce, allowing this tune to serve as an invitation to more from a promising young artist. Tyga, “Vibe (If I Back It Up)”Ĭookiee Kawaii’s “Vibe (If I Back It Up)” - an ode to posterior power set to the thump of 160bpm and laced with Kawaii’s soft serve vocal - started the year as a meteoric TikTok trend.

Conveniently well-suited to home listening, “Like This” finds a plushy middle ground between the club and the couch. The song, with its airy synths and gentle wind chimes, would float away were it not anchored by a shuffling beat, and PHJ’s ASMR-like vocals are especially soothing. It’s a genre-hopping display of her musical repertoire, yet lead single “Like This” calls back to the dreamy, lowkey-rap-meets-deep-house sound for which she’s known. KATIE BAINĪfter breaking through in late 2018, 박혜진 Park Hye Jin leveled up in 2020 by signing her How Can I EP to Ninja Tune. Hitting like a Mack Truck to your solar plexus and nasty in all the right ways, the song was a pummeling headbanger for all of the moments when we just needed to get out of our heads. The genre has always been particularly physical, and so it went with “No Doubt,” the October collab from Griz and Jauz. So many so, that in fact in certain moments it felt better to just kind of turn off our brains entirely. Indeed, there were a lot of existential issues to ponder this year.

Maybe one day soon, we’ll get to live out its message. Bearing uplifting builds, sunny synths and a steady kick drum for good measure, “Bodies” is the feel-good bop we needed in 2020. The Knocks teamed up with queer pop-rock trio MUNA to pay homage to something we didn’t realize we’d miss so much until it was taken away - dancing on top of strangers in crowded, sweaty basements. “Bodies” would have been the song of the summer, if this summer wasn’t totally whack and had actually felt like summer at all. Here are our picks for the 25 best dance songs of the year. In all of its beating, pulsing, shimmery glory, it did exactly that. Thus fundamentally, the role of dance music this year was to just help us all keep going as we army crawled towards the finish line of 2020.

Blasting into our living rooms, fueling our workouts and getting heads bobbing intermittently throughout the workday, dance music pepped us up, raised our heart rates, created nostalgia for all those good times and longing for that moment when the festival gates reopen.

List of lyrical dance songs holiday series#

Stranger Than to Host Dance Event Series at Los Angeles' Petersen Auto Museumīut while circumstances were grim, the dance music released during 2020 was anything but.