David Bowie passed last night but his legacy lives on. His music has been a staple in our wedding and corporate event dinner and dance sets for years. Just a couple that are in our music catalog:
- Golden Years
- Heroes
- Kooks
- Let’s Dance
- Modern Love
- Oh! You Pretty Things
- Space Oddity
- Under Pressure
- Ziggy Stardust
However, now that our 20 something wedding clients are products of the 90s era, very few find their way on to our couples’ music request lists anymore. Except for two. You can probably guess which ones. They are “Let’s Dance” and “Under Pressure”. Both songs are upbeat (although the latter is a faster tempo). But if you had to pick just one, what would be your best David Bowie party song ever? Which one would rock your party the best?
From a DJ perspective, I have to go with “Under Pressure”. The tempo (114 beats per minute) is perfect to transition between a dinner set into a dance set. You have the noticeable bass riff that has guests usually thinking you’re going into “Ice Ice Baby”. However, I’ve found that in a wedding set, you can keep the older folks dancing longer with this David Bowie tune because they know the lyrics rather than going with Vanilla Ice’s knock-off old school rap track. The key to this tune is not to stay with it too long. If you get to the bridge at about 2 minutes in, the beat drops out for about 20 seconds (which can seem like an eternity for your average dance crowd) and then the track changes in feel and can be tricky getting out of without letting it play to the very end.
The best remix I’ve found to date for a wedding/corporate application is one by DiscoTech. The song stays true to the original and is a quick 2 minutes and 30 seconds with a DJ friendly intro and outro fade that makes it easy to transition into whatever genre you want to go to next. What are your thoughts? Do you agree with this pick? Or do you think another song should top the list? Have a better remix of Under Pressure? Comment below.
