“They’re dragging me to the end of the night” Who? Who is that ? The hits that make us dance on party nights. Each celebration has its killer playlist and New Year’s Eve, the iconic evening of the year, is no exception to this rule. With eight billion human beings on Earth, the melodies to jiggle to are legion. And we all have favorites to wiggle our hips. To move his body, Yacine likes to listen I like to move it from Real 2 Real and The Mad Stuntman.
“It’s a classic of electronic music that everyone knows and a pleasure to let off steam on! “, explains this reader of 20 minutes who responded to our call for evidence. Hard to blame him when hundreds of lemurs also dance hearing him in the animated film Madagascar released in 2005. With 123 beats per minute, I like to move it is in perfect tempo. At 120 beats per minute, like the name of Robin Campillo’s moving film released in 2017, the human body and brain synchronize more easily. Because music is above all with our brain that we listen to it.
From the ear to the rhythm of the heart
“There are links between the auditory regions and the motor regions of the brain. When we hear a rhythmic rhythm, we instinctively start dancing. Even heartbeats tend to be correlated with the tempo of the music,” explains Solveig Serre, CNRS research director and musicologist. If plethora of armies in the world use military anthems to encourage soldiers to march, it is not for nothing. Stéphanie, she, quotes Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight) of the ABBA group.
“Any time and anywhere, from the first notes, I jump! I stir while doing the dishes, I dance on the floor as soon as it sounds, in the car on my way to work on days when I don’t feel like it, ”lists our internet user. Catchy, rhythmic and repetitive, the song of the Swedish group released in 1979 has many qualities to push us to perform our best choreographies. But the band’s music has another advantage.
“Music drives dance”
“ABBA also belongs to a shared intangible musical heritage”, emphasizes Solveig Serre. “What works for everyone is surely the big hits that everyone knows like Britney Spears or Madonna”, explains the popular music specialist who adds that “the ear is cultural”. When all the guests know the song and its lyrics, playing it creates a particularly powerful moment of cohesion. A phenomenon familiar to football fans when they sing Freed from desire, for instance.
It is also for this reason that Yacine adores I like to move it. It’s a “pleasure to hear everyone shout ‘MOVE IT!’ “, he explains. At the end of the evening, who has never tasted his pleasure when the whole assembly recited the words of Dana’s tribe or some, much decried, Connemara Lakes ? And on certain tempos, difficult to remain still. “Music leads to dance, one goes with the other. It was also a problem during the Covid-19 where you had to be seated because certain music is listened to with the body”, deciphers Solveig Serre.
Jiggle to some opera
However, dancing can be learned. And all eras and generations have not swayed their hips to the same sounds. It’s hard to imagine an opera spectator getting up and waltzing to the sound of love is a rebellious bird, iconic song from the opera Carmen. And yet, “to this music, in the 18th century, we were standing up and moving. There was a whole education, carried by the bourgeoisie, which seated people and made them silent, ”underlines Solveig Serre. Still, opera might not be the best choice to get your guests moving as 2023 dawns.
Try instead Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson. For our reader Magalie and her 9-year-old daughter, it’s a must-have song. “She automatically gives the banana!” We listen to it while fidgeting in the car, and if it passes in the evening, there, I no longer answer for anything! She lends herself to all the excesses in terms of choreography, it’s now or never to be lathered on the track, ”she says. Very rhythmic, this song indeed calls for dancing.
From pogo to entrechat
“It’s not so much the melody that makes us dance as the rhythmic structure,” emphasizes the CNRS research director. And if Magalie insists on the lightness of this song which “gives you a banana”, a sad song can quite have a similar effect if its tempo is fast, it is rhythmic and has bass. ” Then we dance by Stromae is a rather sad song in its lyrics but which nevertheless also makes you dance. A song that makes you want to dance is not necessarily due to a melody that is joyful”, notes Solveig Serre.
But for Magalie’s daughter, Uptown Funk will probably forever be linked to those happy memories with his mother. “Music has a very powerful nostalgic power and is strongly linked to good times,” explains the researcher. So, each playlist has its audience. If your friends are metalheads, prefer Slipknot to midnight demons. “The music of The party [film sorti en 1980] if the guests were born in 1960, everyone dances too, but it’s not the same dance,” emphasizes Solveig Serre. Pogo, slow, entrechats, etc., all dance steps are authorized for New Year’s Eve. And for classical, nothing better than the algorithms of music streaming platforms like Deezer. With a good speaker.