Dance Tonight

From Wikipedia:

“Dance Tonight” is a song by Paul McCartney, the opening track to his 2007 album Memory Almost Full. The song was released as a download single in the United Kingdom on 18 June 2007, McCartney’s 65th birthday. A week later, the song debuted at number 34 in the UK Singles Chart. The UK single was also issued as a picture disc that came in a plastic sleeve with a cardboard insert. On 1 July, the song peaked at number 26 in the UK charts. The song was also nominated for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance at the 2008 Grammy Awards.

In the United States, it was released as the second single from the album. The song also debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 69. It marked McCartney’s final appearance in the Hot 100 until 2015.

McCartney performed the song live as a duet with Australian singer Kylie Minogue on Jools Holland’s 2007 New Year’s Eve television special Hootenanny.

The song was used in the advertising on PBS network Thirteen for its May 2013 lineup.

Origin

The left-handed mandolin used for the song, shown delivered to him by mail in the music video, was purchased by McCartney from a guitar shop he frequents in London. Whenever he would play the mandolin, his three-year-old daughter Beatrice would be moved to dance, after which McCartney states that the song “wrote itself”. It was the last song recorded for the album, and was included on the album at the last minute.

The song is also included in an iPod + iTunes advertisement featuring a black and white McCartney walking down a colourful, animated street while performing the song. It saw frequent airplay in summer 2007.

Recording

“Dance Tonight” was recorded in January–February 2007 at RAK Studios in London, with McCartney playing mandolin, electric guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, percussion and autoharp.

Track listing

Originally the single was to be released simultaneously via download, 7″ and CD, but the release was scaled back to just a download on 18 June 2007. According to the official album website, a picture disc 7″ was released in the UK on 23 July 2007, while the CD was released internationally on a date to be announced. The song still managed to chart in the United States, despite not being released in any form there, except an acoustic version available on iTunes from the Summer of Love 1967 double issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

Interview with David Khane, from Mix Online, October 1, 2007:

“That kick drum sound you hear at the beginning and throughout the track is actually Paul stomping on a piece of wood with his foot,” Kahne recalls. The mandolin-based track was recorded in January 2007 at RAK Studios in London. It was the last song recorded for the album and features McCartney on mandolin (an instrument he mastered for this recording), bass, auto-harp, drums, fuzz bass, keyboard and electric guitar.

From paulmccartney.com, May 20, 2007:

This was the last track I recorded for the album. I was on my way into a meeting in London and I always like
to drop off before I actually get into the meeting, have a bit of a walk and experience life for a minute.

Anyway there’s a guitar shop that I always drop in on the way down the street and I went in and was chatting to the guy in there and he mentioned that he had a left-handed mandolin that he wanted to show me. So I ended up getting it anyway and I found the great thing about it was that I didn’t know how to play it, because it’s tuned like a violin so I had no idea what the chords were. This was good because it took me back to when I was a teenager being presented with an instrument you didn’t know how to play. So I had to figure it out for myself. I found one chord, then another one, then a real strange chord, very simple shape, but an odd chord, I still don’t know what it is but it sounded great. This was over Christmas 2006. With this little instrument at home over the holiday I started doing this little thing, stomping in the kitchen, just enjoying myself, trying to find chords, and then I start singing ‘Everybody gonna dance tonight’ got that little thing going, and every time my little girl would come running in and start dancing, so I fell in love with this song and with the mandolin and the whole hoe-down aspect and eventually it kind of wrote itself, I just stuck a few more words in it and thought I’m just gonna keep it simple: ‘everybody’s gonna dance around, everybody’s gonna stomp their feet, everybody’s gonna feel the beat’ and not try and get too deep. I liked it so much I thought I’ve got to record this so I ran in quickly and did it and stuck it on the album. It seemed like a good atmospheric opening.

A couple of weeks ago we made the video, which was great fun. It’s directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind) and stars Natalie Portman and Mackenzie Crook. We had a good time doing it. ‘Dance Tonight’ is the opening track to my new album, Memory Almost Full. 

Paul McCartney

Beatrice has established herself as a crucial sounding board for new songs. When McCartney first picked up the mando­lin a few years ago and tried to learn it, he struck upon a spiraling, upbeat riff that would become the 2007 single “Dance Tonight.” “I was hitting the floor, singing, and she came running in, danc­ing around,” he recalls. “I went, ‘Whoa, there’s my proof.’”

From RollingStone, November 7, 2013

Lyrics

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

Related film

Videos

Live performances

“Dance Tonight” has been played in 194 concerts and 53 soundchecks.

Latest concerts where “Dance Tonight” has been played

Going further

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dance_Tonight

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