The 90s and 00s Dance Anthems That Still Fill a Floor
Not a writer guessing. This is what 113,045 listener votes say still turns a room, and two records have never taken a vote against.
Two records from this era have never taken a single vote against them on Frisk. Paradise, See The Light, from 2005, and Rezonance Q, Someday, from 2003. Hundreds of votes between them and not one thumb down. If you want to know what still fills a floor, start there.
We can be unusually specific about this, because we are not guessing. Since March 2021 Frisk listeners have cast 113,045 votes on records as they played, across nearly six thousand tracks. What follows is not a writer's opinion about what people probably still like. It is what you told us, one thumb at a time, while it was actually on.
The Ones That Come Top
From 1990 to 2009, ranked by votes for minus votes against:
- Nakatomi - Children Of The Night (1996)
- Micky Modelle vs Jessy - Dancing In The Dark (2006)
- Ultrabeat - Pretty Green Eyes (2003)
- Paradise - See The Light (2005)
- Evoke - Arms of Loren (1996)
- Milk Inc - In My Eyes (AATW release, early 00s)
- Divine Inspiration - The Way (2002)
- Flip & Fill - Shooting Star (2001)
- Special D - Come With Me (2002)
- Ultrabeat - Sure Feels Good (2007)
- Rezonance Q - Someday (2003)
- Flip & Fill - True Love Never Dies (2001)
- Bounce Force - Golden (2000)
- Red 5 - I Love You Stop! (1996)
- Ultrabeat - Elysium (2006)
- Dana Rayne - Object Of My Desire (2003)
If you went out anywhere between Newcastle and Teesside from about 1996 onwards, that reads less like a chart and more like a night.
What It's Worth
Hearing these at home is one thing. Hearing them at Dreamworx, in a room where everyone knows exactly when the drop lands, is a different experience, and it is why people still pay to go out for music they already own.
A daytime event with a real production budget lands in the same bracket as a couple of rounds and a taxi home, except you get six hours out of it instead of an evening, and you are in bed at a reasonable time. Against a night that starts at nine and costs you the whole of Sunday, the arithmetic is kinder than most people assume. Worth checking the going rate before you decide you cannot be bothered.
The Ones Nobody Votes Against
A perfect score is rarer than it sounds. Even the biggest records pick up the odd vote down, because somebody has heard it once too often.
See The Light and Someday have not, across hundreds of plays. What they have in common is that neither asks anything of you. You do not need to be in the right mood, or to have been there the first time. They work, on anyone, immediately.
What This List Says About Us
Look at what is not there. The records that top every national 90s dance list are almost entirely absent. What you voted for instead is bounce, hard dance and vocal trance: Ultrabeat three times over, Micky Modelle, Flip & Fill twice, Bounce Force, Special D.
That is not a quirk of who happened to vote. It is what going out here actually sounded like. The accepted history of 90s and 00s dance was written in London and Ibiza, and while that was being written the North East was doing something faster, harder and far more melodic, in rooms nobody bothered to document at the time. This list is one of the few places it is written down.
The 1996 Records That Will Not Sit Down
Three tracks from that one year are still near the top: Children Of The Night, Arms of Loren and I Love You Stop!. Thirty years on, out-voting records made a decade later.
A flashback, which is our word for a proper oldskool tune, is supposed to fade eventually. These have not. What they share is a long build and a payoff everybody can feel coming, and that is the thing that turns a room of individuals into one room.
The Ones Held Back for Last
Every DJ keeps three or four records back for the point where the afternoon needs to turn. On this evidence the safest of them are Dancing In The Dark, Children Of The Night and See The Light, and the reason is the same in all three cases: everybody in the room knows what is coming, and knows it at the same moment.
If there is a record you think belongs on that list, vote for it next time you hear it. This list was built entirely out of people doing exactly that, and it is how it changes.