A lot of people ask me for help on creating the perfect playlist for their party.
As a DJ it really is quite difficult for us to come up with a list of songs that satisfy all ages. There is a fine line between not boring the younger guests and annoying the older ones but it’s our job and we’re getting paid to keep as many people as happy as possible.
Looking back through the years there are a number of songs that have lodged themselves firmly in the “party floor filler” genre, you will hear them everywhere. The reason for this is that upon hearing these songs some people just cannot help themselves and need to get up and make some shapes on the dance floor. Fine examples of such songs are Dancing Queen, Build Me Up Buttercup, It’s Raining Men and pretty much any track from the film Dirty Dancing. These are absolute tried and tested party classics and whilst you might not want to listen to these tracks outside of the party atmosphere, all taste, decency and dignity certainly needs to be left at the front door!
The busiest time of ANY party is between 9:30pm and 11:30pm, this is when it is our job to get as many people on to the dance floor as possible. The buffet will have been served and eaten and any amounts of alcohol intake prior to this time will have relaxed your guests, gracefully lowered their inhibitions and they will be ready to hit the floor.
One of the best aspects of our service is that we allow YOU to choose the music. Yes you can leave it up to us if you wish or you can have a go at choosing as many or as few songs that you want us to play during the evening, you are only limited by the physical amount of playing time available. This equates on average to around 15 songs per hour of average length.
How?
On our music planning website we give you the opportunity to search through our library of songs and pick out your favourites. These selections can be split into four categories…
Must play
These are songs that you absolutely must definitely hear during the evening. We recommend that you choose up to a maximum of 20 tracks that remind you of the good times, songs you love, songs from your youth, anything that will inspire you to get up and dance. We absolutely guarantee to play all of these tracks at some point during the evening.
Play if possible
We allow up to 100 selections in this category and this is the list that we cherry pick songs from during the evening. We suggest that this category is used to show tracks from artists you like such as Girls Aloud, Black Eyed Peas, Wham and so on. Be mindful of the fact that whilst it’s ok to choose 4 or 5 songs from Madonna, do you really want your evening to turn into a Madonna tribute night?
You also have the option of adding little comments to each of your choices, for example you could put “One for all the hen girls” – we would identify this song as a good one to play when all the girls are on the dance floor.
Do not play
Fairly self explanatory really, this is the category where you can list up to 20 tracks you just don’t want to hear at all during the disco. Fine examples are Agadoo, Hokey Cokey and the Birdie Song, etc. You may also want to include tracks that remind you of ex-girlfriends/boyfriends, recently deceased relatives or just songs you really REALLY hate. Don’t be afraid to list party classics. If you hate them then we won’t play them!
Guest requests
Allowing your guests to select their favourites really is a great way of getting them involved in your party although some guests can’t help themselves but choose all the dodgy songs as well as the ones they know will annoy you so that you get annoyed at us for playing them! The beauty of this though is that you can see exactly what songs they have chosen and can delete them as you see fit therefore you have overall control, you also get to see who has been choosing songs as they have to put their name next to each one.
We always favour the clients list over the guest request list although their may be times when we play songs off the guest list as they fit in with your own selections.
Choose your tracks carefully
Try to think of songs that you can dance to rather than songs you like to listen to. An example of this could be Dire Strait’s Money For Nothing, an absolutely fantastic song to listen to, not so great to dance to. Try listening and dancing to the songs, you’ll be surprised! Some of the best songs in the world are just really awkward to dance to. A good example is “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees, it’s painful to dance to at its normal speed which is why when we play it we speed it up quite a bit!
Look at the age ranges of your guests, work out what songs were in the charts when they were growing up. Try to keep your list of tracks to songs that people will instantly recognise, there’s nothing worse than playing a song to a packed dance floor and then everyone looking at each other thinking “what’s this?”, before you know it they’ve all wandered off and we have to start all over again!
And finally…
Remember, although it’s your party there’s only one of you and possibly up to one hundred people or more other people that we need to satisfy, the last thing you want to be seen doing is forcing your guests to dance to songs they don’t recognise or particularly like. Try not to keep your list to one specific genre but to songs with mass appeal from across the decades, it’s the best way to guarantee that feet will be on the floor and the chairs will be empty!