Dance Music Songs That A Non-Dance Music Fan Will Like

Everything in Lost Scripts' "I'll Be Watching You" sounds like a hook. The ascending and descending synths, vocals on the verses, stalker-ish chorus, and crunchy drums all come together for a song that stays well filled out but makes every sound count. By the end of the song, you'll be humming, and when you're doing that by the end of a song, genre stops mattering.

Chris Malinchak's "So Good To Me" is rooted in house music, but it feels soulful and timeless like a song written decades ago, conceived by a man and his piano. A big part of getting non-dance music fans to like dance music is to incorporate vocals, and Malinchak knows how to include just the right amount of singing (on this one he samples Marvin Gaye) and repetition to create a smooth kind of dance track and makes you want to nod and sing along, not rave your face off.

This one eases you into the real heart of the song, which doesn't come until a little over a minute in. Sampha's gentle voice warms you up, then at 1:15 Lil Silva's whip-cracking drums and elastic electronics kick in. By then, you're already in it.

There is a certain formula to be followed if one wants to make dance music with crossover potential. At the moment that formula is house music, generally with soulful vocals and a big, elastic bassline. Ben Pearce well and truly mastered this formula with "What I Might Do," which kills it in a club at 3.45am, but could be played at a family gathering without offending anyone. Perfectly for subtly indoctrinating your grandma to love dance music.

Not only is this song short and easily digestible (it clocks in under three minutes), but it packs a bouncy bassline, catchy synth stabs, and most crucially, vocals. But these aren't any old vocals, oh no. Recorded live by one of Arkon Fly (as opposed to the sample based route taken by much dance music), the vocals here sound like a gospel singer has gone rogue and turned up to the Warehouse in Chicago in the mid '80s. Short, sweet, euphoric, and surely able to warm the heart of even the most fervent dance music hater.

This is one of the more obvious choices for this list, as Burial is loved well beyond dance music circles. Burial's entire catalogue—with the exception maybe of his most recent EPs Kindred and Truant/Rough Sleeper with their 11 minute long explorations in sound—would be appropriate for this list. Although Burial's music is based in dance music, with those lurching garage drum patterns and rich bass, what really stands out are the gorgeously haunting vocal samples which float across his tracks, sounding alternately angelic and devilish. Burial's music may all be produced on a computer, but it has a brilliantly human side to it, something that is missing from much of the over-produced, overly polished "EDM" that reaches the radio.

A non-dance music fan's biggest complaint, especially one who listens to a lot of hip-hop or rock, is often focussed on the lack of words in dance music. Disclosure’s debut album managed to reach such a wide audience because they countered that complaint by featuring vocalists on eight of the fourteen tracks, but even when there was no featured artist, the duo still provided some sort of vocal for the casual listener to get stuck in to. On "When A Fire Starts To Burn," those vocals are a sample of motivational speaker Eric Thomas, and it worked as well as a catchy sung chorus, providing that one element that gets stuck in your head and just won't leave.

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This certainly won't appeal to any non-dance music fan, and isn't the sort of gently enjoyable, non-offensive song you can put on in the background, but a hip-hop lover, especially one who loved TNGHT's "Higher Ground," should be able to appreciate "Hellifornia" in all it's sub-destroying glory. In fact there are points of reference for a rap fan throughout the song, from the cavernous 808s to the twisted synth line that sounds like G-funk on acid. Sure, a hip-hop fan might wish that Dr. Dre and Ice Cube would drop in and spit some bars on this huge beat, but nonetheless, a certain type of non-dance music fan will love this song.

Dance music is (obviously) made for dancing, but sometimes the visceral nature of music that functions effectively in a club can put off the casual listener, trying to give dance music a chance in their headphones or out of their laptop speakers. Rustie’s "Slasherr" is visceral. It's brutal. It's a beast. Flume’s remix rounds off the harder, less palatable edges, and cloaks everything in a shimmering, golden glow, adding some vocal samples and making the drop a colorful rainbow explosion, in contrast to Rustie's sharp-edged original.

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One of the most common things for a non-dance music fan to say is that dance music is repetetive. "It just goes untz untz untz for 7 minutes," they say, "With nothing more than tiny little rhythmic variations. It's boring!" One thing that Bondax' music is most certianly not, is boring. It's warm, and full of rich textures, layered atop one another, and finished off, on this song, by a gloriously catchy, throwback disco feel hook.

"Baby I got that thingggg, and I know it's right."

The original instrumental version, with its glorious saxophone part and lovely little xylophone melody would probably be acceptable to non- dance music fan. I mean, it's pretty hard to get mad at the just-the-right-side-of-cheesy sax and xylophone even if there is a steady four to the floor beat behind it all, but this vocal version, featuring a soulful turn by WIll Heard is basically impossible to hate. Songs this warm, rich, and all-engulfing shouldn't be restrained by genre tags—it's just stupid that someone might be put off by the genre tag of deep house and not listen to this summertime beauty.

Rudimental are masters of combining just the right amount of pop with their dancey production so that dance music fans won't immediately discount it as pop, and non-dance music fans will hear the song and give it a chance. "Waiting All Night" is the group's biggest song so far, a genuine pop hit, which is powered along by a drum and bass beat. Sure your underground dance music-loving friend (if you have one) will immediately discount this as mainstream shit, but in getting dance music sounds heard beyond their normal community, this song is a thorough success.