Oh the music of DWTS. How we love it. How we hate it.

I think Len's comment about the band tonight was as close to a veiled criticism of the rest of the show's music that we're going to get from the judges as much as it was a compliment for that particular song/dance combination.

Before anyone else mentions it, I have to say - even though I loved that particular piece of music (and the dance that accompanied it), to this day, I still cannot believe they actually used Duran Duran's "The Reflex" for a Paso Doble.

Good on Monique/Louis for making it work, though.

I actually don't always hate the music. I'm not on the we must have traditional music bandwagon because as we've seen, sometimes offbeat choices CAN work. But what I do hate is the horrid singers. I think some of the bad music would be much more tolerable if it were actually sung by people with talent.

When I get distracted during a dance by the music, it's usually because the singers are so completely cringeworthy that I have to mute the music.

I agree, msrayrudd. I don't have a problem with non-traditional music choices ( nor should I, considering what I choose to perform to sometimes!) at all. But the band is generally atrocious, and when they slow the tempo down ( I know they sometimes have to, but still!) it makes the song even more recongnisable.

What in the hell did that band do to my Shakira tonight?

Seriously? What WAS that?

That was supposed to be Shakira's version? OMG. I just assumed she and Wyclef had remade a crappier version and that's what the singers were butchering. Yikes.

However, I will give them this: I had a fit of giggles listening to the singer grunt "I like to MOVE it MOVE it"--ditto for the pre-pubescent "Besame Mucho."

Good Lord, the band and sucky singers make me beg for ice picks to be stabbed into my ears. They'd be a big hit at Gitmo.

Will this always be the thread title? Something like "hit the mute button!!1" perhaps.

I hadn't intended on making this the defacto thread about the band and singers, but rather the songs and song choices. However, if there's discussion warranted about the band and the singers, I'll start that up as well. For the time being (and until mods say otherwise), this is a thread about the songs and song choices.

ETA: Yep, this is the thread for the band and singers as well. :)

Actually, that was Wyclef's earlier version of the song, called "Dance Like This," featuring Claudette Ortiz, which was used in the "Dirty Dancing" sequel/prequel/whatev "Havana Nights."

Still horrible, though.

I thought last night was one of the least offensive nights for this show's music. It didn't make me stand up and say "Good job, band!" but it didn't make me expect Bill Murray to start singing at any moment, either. Either my expectations for good music on DWTS are very low, or my expectations for bad music are very high.

My personal theory is that they pick one or two recognizable/appropriate songs, then hunt down the rest of the tunes with the cheapest royalty rights. I'm not a broadcast rights expert- is there a database of copyrighted tunes, searchable by cost of on-air rights? If there is, someone at DWTS is working that list like a bandit.

I only started watching midway through S2, but my vote for worst song ever was the mambo to Jump bu KrisKros.

What I want to know is: Why did the female singer (Beverly, I think - yes, I'm bad enough to have looked up all the singers' names) feel the need to do the "cockney" inflections on the Corinne Bailey Rae song?? That just distracted me right away from the dancing.

To be fair, this season we're getting more recent and recognizable song selections. Honestly, I was shocked that we got "Hips Don't Lie" and "Put Your Records On" last night. Obviously Billy Ray is working his connections to get the songs he wants since we not only have his music (plug!), but Johnny Cash. It's an improvement over past years selections, even if you're not into the performance of the songs.

Heh. Thanks for the reminder - now I'll be having nightmares of that singer trying to sing the overdubs of the Remix version all by himself...

"What's Going On?" for the rhumba? Sheesh!

For me making somebody dance the Paso to Black Betty just overtook my previous pick for Paso torture of inflicting Final Countdown on Louis and Lisa. The fact that they did it on the tour shows how proud he was of pulling that off, as well he should be. I still think Louis and Lisa could have weathered Black Betty. Billy Ray just didn't have the talent although I'm sure Karina could have come up with something for a good dancer. Louis seems to be the whipping boy for whatever sadist picks these songs because whatever dance they did to ABC (the mambo?) was so difficult to do to that.

And for God's sake if you must use Duran Duran for a Paso why not make it View to a Kill. I have no idea if the beat is right but at least the whole matador thing applies.

Okay, I feel a little better that it wasn't Shakira they butchered... the song was still ass, though. And I still say Shakira would be a fun musical guest.

'What's Going On?' for the rumba was indeed a bad choice. Nothing says dancefloor foreplay like 'Brother brother brother, there's far too many of you dying.'

Yeah. That's hot.

For all the talk about musicality, the producers sure do miss the boat on the lyrical aspect. I've already given up hope that they find songs that really fit the dance (Bon Jovi for the paso doble two years in a row? O....k.) But the only dance where the lyrics decently fit the dance recently was Kym and Jerry's waltz.

Good grief, what were they thinking when Maks and Leila danced to a friggin' march last week?!? Ay yi yi.

Call me dopey, but I actually really dug that song "I like to move it, move it" that Apolo and his partner used last night. We went around the house all night, singing it.

The Reel 2 Real original is ok, I must admit, definitealy a catchy tune. However, last night's version was so horrendous I had to watch A&J on mute.

Whoever sang "Put Your Records On" was pretty good though, for the most part actually sounding very close to Corinne Bailey Rae. Her attempt at an English accent on the word "little" made me grimace though.

Move it Move it was OK because the execution wasn't totally off, but I have to say with J's tiger outfit and A&J's overall CUTENESS, I kept picturing the Madagaskar critters' version of Move it Move it. Dude, A&J are cuter than cartoon animals with humongous eyes! (what were those anyway?)

Another spinning gold out of straw Louis moment...9 to 5. I really doubt Dolly Parton was thinking ballroom.

Oh and since nobody has mentioned it yet...when they announced Cheryl and Drew were doing the paso and the first two notes of Thriller started up I thought OMG NO! But that was magical.

Somehow I wiped that out of my memory.




Lemurs. That's what I kept thinking of too. Apolo and Julianne are that cute. They should of had Borat singing the song as in the movie. Might have been half decent.

I'm sure someone will rumba to "We Are the World" next! A mix of sensuality and poverty....Only on "Dancing With the Stars...."

When I heard the music that Laila and Maks did their Paso to I had a flashback to a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It just sounded like the kind of music Bugs would have used while doing something awful to poor Elmer Fudd.

The music for this show makes my family bond on Monday nights. When we hear the dances they're doing, we all immediately try to imagine songs that will be used. Sadly, the choices are never as awful as what they actually end up dancing to. We reckon we'll see a cha-cha to Careless Whisper pretty soon, can't wait for that.

Understatement of the week. The semi-serious dancer in me says whoever was in charge of the choreography was NOT paying attention to the dramatic component. The Marvin fan in me was seriously insulted. The TWoPer in me says WTF.



There is a great original version of that somewhere on iTunes. A friend of mine remixed it for me.

And on a note that relates to both, the band is hot. It's a pain in the butt to learn and cover all those tunes.

The vocalists, however? Where are they getting these people from?!? I live in NYC. Brilliant vocalists practically scratch each others' eyes out to appear on demos, especially since the work for the advertising/commercial market is shrinking. Two of the girls I work with have perfect pitch and five octaves, and someone in DWTS casting either turned them down or hid the audition date from all the good singers in NYC, or LA, or wherever they are. It's like I would imagine Cat Scratch Fever on bad drugs might be, listening to some of these butcherings. The hell?

Jennifer Lopez should have her attorneys contact ABC. The singers did an atrocious rendition of her song on national television.

Speaking of atrocious - that version of "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" sounded like it was being played by an oompah band.

The "singing" on the Erasure song last night physically hurt my ears a couple of times. Aren't there lots of tiny little bones inside the ear canal? I think some of mine were broken.

While I think the band itself is great, the singers suck ass!

Not only that, but just the idea that they could adapt it to what was allegedly paso rhythm -- totally ruined the song. Or to borrow from Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update bit with Seth and Amy -- "Really?!"

It's a good thing that Andrew Lloyd Webber isn't dead, because otherwise he'd surely be spinning in his grave.

Well since he is alive, let the trial begin!! They murdered that song. I cringed the entire time and it wasn't because of Heather Mills' dancing.

I'm hearing the "We Love to Boogie" in my head now - and I was sort of surprised they used the words:

Belinda Mae Fender's got a Cadillac Bone
Jenny's lost her cherry
walking all the way home

Lost her cherry? Am I old or does it mean the same thing as it used to?

What dances do you guys think usually get the best music?

I'd say the cha-cha and the mambo are usually danced to pretty good music (with Jump being an obvious exception). Samba and Jive aren't too bad, although I never think the music is fast enough in most cases with these two dances. The rhumba music is never really "sexy" enough for me. Songs like "I'm Like a Bird" and "Put Your Records On" are pretty enough, but don't have a sensual mood. Let's not even get started with "What's Going On." I'd really like to see a rhumba to "Caramel" by Suzanne Vega or "Mondo Bongo" which was one of themes in Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

I think the quickstep usually gets the best music out of the standard dances. There have been a few duds, but overall I think the quickstep gets the most traditional music. Waltz is usually OK, probably because they have to conform to a certain tempo. Problem is I can't really remember any waltz songs, because they are pretty boring. Foxtrot is a bit of a mixed bag... "Power of Love"? Please.

The worst offenders are the Paso Doble and Tango songs. I don't think I've heard a single good song chosen for the Paso Doble that wasn't the traditional music, except for maybe "Thriller" (which could have been a disaster, but they pulled it off) and Mario and Karina's song last year. I don't necessarily want to hear the traditional music every single time, but there has to be something better than "Waiting for Tonight."

I think the most horrific tango music was Blondie for Anna and Jerry.

I'm not a ballroom dancer, but that Don't Cry For Me Paso Doble was just deeply deeply wrong. The Star Wars tango was weird, but so was that bar in Star Wars, so maybe, um, ok. But this thing was just wrong.

(It didn't make me think of oompah, although now you've stuck this horrible Roll Out the Doble thing in my head. Somehow the Don't Cry For Me made me think of a couple of years ago here, when cumbia all of a sudden swarmed over every tejano club. Dancing to a cumbia version of any piece of music that ever existed - white christmas, jailhouse rock, peanut vendor - all cumbia.)

That was the Samba Louis/Monique did to that. Actually, I thought it was a REALLY good dance - the problem was the music was so wrong for it, the judges didn't even think it was a proper Samba at all. Turned out that with a different piece of music (Emmitt/Cheryl's Samba), it looked WAY better.

You might like to know that "Thriller" made its Dutch DWTS debut last week as one of the choices for the Paso Doble on that version of the show--and I have to admit, the resulting routine was one that could give Cheryl and Drew's a run for the money, in my opinion!

Thinks for the link legaleagle! They were great! And the Dutch band sounded damn good!

You're welcome. It should come as no surprise to you that that particular couple appears to be the front-runner on the Dutch show this year. Also, if you think the Dutch band is good, you should see the guest singers that they get for their results shows--I've yet to see anything as lame as some of the acts we've had on our results shows!

Who picks the music choices for these dances? They can be outright laughable. The person who chose The Phantom of the Opera for a paso (wasn't that a paso?) last year should be drug out into the street and shot. Hideous. But then, who would have ever guessed that the Thriller paso would be so good? Every once in a while, the unconventional song choices can really work. Most of the time, they seem more meh. And then every now and then, the Phantom comes in. Ew.

Sometimes the song choices can seem a bit strange, but if you listen for the underlying rhythm, it can work. Also, the song can be arranged with a slightly stronger, altered percussion, so that it has more of an obvious rhythm for one dance or another. Since I first started dancing, I've noticed that while listening to music, I'll try and decide what dance you could do to it. There are a lot of pop and R&B songs that take only a tiny bit of tweaking to become perfectly appropriate for Latin dances, especially. Some take no tweaking at all. IMO, part of the problem is that the band isn't making it obvious enough that it's not just a cover of "Song X," but it's a cover of "Song X" with a samba/rhumba/tango beat.

I squealed when I saw Billy Ray Cyrus's Jive song. It's my "dance shamelessly around the room" song.
We (in Australia) have had most of the crap songs you've had, but I must say, we've never had "Waiting For Tonight". Ouch.

You and we in the US should count our blessings, FireMayBurn. This past week was "Madonna Week" on the Polish DWTS, and here is a list of the dances/songs that were used:

Paso Doble - "Like a Prayer"
Quickstep - "American Pie"
Paso Doble - "Like a Virgin"
Quickstep - "Hanky Panky"
Foxtrot - "Cherish"
Paso Doble - "Frozen"
Foxtrot - "Material Girl"
Samba - "La Isla Bonita"

Care to guess which combination turned out to be the most craptacular? They all made some of our more atrocious selections look pretty good by comparison!

A Paso to "Frozen"?? That must have been slow enough for even Sara Evans to attempt it.

I'm trying to imagine the "Material Girl" foxtrot, and I think I may need to lie down.

I agree. Hell, "Material Girl" made for a fine Cha-Cha, but a foxtrot? HOO-BOY.

In that case, do not go here, do not click on the drop-down menu, and do not, under any circumstances, click on "Odc. 8: PARA 3: Ivan i Blanka".

(Hee. Yes, I'm evil. Why do you ask?) ;)

These people are terrible. I'm tempted to start a thread on the house band, because even when the music selections aren't bad, the performances are. Twice this season they have made me miss a Sanjaya Malakar rendition, Besame Mucho and Stepping Out With My Baby. They totally ruined Holding Out for a Hero by slowing the verses down.