Head, heart AND hips?

'Move on Up' - Curtis Mayfield?

Yello "Bostich"

I dunno Kraftwerk for me is head, hips & heart, they got more soul than the complete roster of Motown. Hell, I would say that most dance music works in those 3 departments, but a nice example would be 'Strings of Life' by Rhythm is Rhythm.

Lots, but the one that springs to mind immediately is a song I've been obsessing over recently: Love Loves To Love Love by Lulu. Completely infectious gutsy stomper with bizarre circular lyrics that seem to be locked into surrealist 60s paranoia à la 'Good Morning Good Morning' or something. Still not sure what it all means but it certainly 'does it' for me in the head department.

Basically, the entire New Order collection between Power, Corruption & Lies and Technique. (OK, so bits of Technique were a bit... patchy, but still.)

If you want a specific song, "Temptation". Lyrics which were deceptively simple enough to touch the heart, yet open enough to interpretation to engage the intellect, and all hooked to chattering synths, scratchy guitars, disco drums and a massive Hook of a bassline.

kraftwerk are surely head, heart and hips. the fallacy that kraftwerk has no heart is ridiculous. with kraftwerk, heart probably comes first.

the house crew - euphoria (nino's dream) - the nino remix, not the poor original. now thats head-heart-hips the lot. oh, and abba's dancing queen of course. but to be honest, a huge chunk of my records (barring of course the stuff like piano magic, which isn't going to do no hips business)

St. Etienne, "He's On The Phone".

Orbital; Foul Play and Omni Trio; The best of the diva-centric 2-step tracks ("Enough Is Enough", "Moving Too Fast", "Crazy Love"); Daft Punk's new album; Pink; The Avalanches. Bear in mind that anything that does it for my hips probably does it for my head as well.

Can i mention: Plaid: Restproof Clockwork. Tracks like Dang Spot and Last Remembered Thing appear to be just little dance-y things on first listen... second listen you realise there's a lot of interesting stuff going on at the same time... by the third listen, you can't help getting a spring of love from your heart.

Orbital, of course. Amon Tobin's _Permutation_ is another one, as is _Fear Of A Black Planet_. And (this is going to get me some stares, I'll bet) _Kid A_, barring "Treefingers".

Holly Golightly's cover of "Use me".

Keep on using me till you use me up

bows 'girls lips glitter'

Folk Implosion - No Need to Worry. It's all Oooh, Mmmmmmm and Hmmmm. That is, except for the first two or three seconds of it.

'The Queen Is Dead'. 'Love'. 'The Saddest Story Ever Told'.

Gang of Four & other literate punk -- Sleater-Kinney. Rap for me tends to always get the hips, but veers wildly between head and heart. De La Soul, and new school are the exception here. Also Missy Elliot.

I've just noticed kate claming that 'bits of Technique were a bit... patchy' and I would like to register that my mouth is opening and closing but no noise is coming out.

Nick, _Technique_ has the misfortune of being a fantastic album with the horrifically annoying "Mr. Disco". It took me EIGHT YEARS to warm to that song; not even UNDERWORLD took me that long.

But does one duff track make the album "patchy"? If that were the case, I can't think of an album I own that isn't patchy in some small way.

I say Technique is very close to perfect.

I don't find 'Mr Disco' annoying. If I were forced to think about it, I might say it's my least favourite track, but I don't look at the album that way. To me it's a perfect sleek rush of perfection that defies chopping up. The lyrics to 'Mr Disco' could be said to be a little weak if you look at them one way, but in another light.. they add a kind of concrete nod to the Ibiza thing, which adds colour to Technique's 'concept album made good' feel.

Having a problem with 'Mr Disco' is akin to having a problem with 'Sloop John B' in my book. it just doesn't make sense to me.

The difference (a difference) between having Mr. Disco and Sloop John B is that no-one has ever been forced to sing "Mr. Disco" in a music lesson by a maniac music teacher who included it in one of his books of songs intended for use in music lesson singalongs. Friends, it was horrific.

I've just had a nightmare vision of Alastair Fitchett forcing his kids to sing Jasmine Minks records. I know he teaches art, not music, but I forgot that for a moment and anyway, it could be conceptual art.

"Spooky Rhodes" by Laika. Succulent, fluttery, "There are things I can't explain/Why the city quiets at dawn...", catch-breath. You can do a little pelvic judder to it, too. Ok, *I* can.

I don't really think of Kraftwerk as danceable for some reason (but then, I don't have The Mix). But they definitely have both head and heart to me. Who could remain unmoved by "Ohm Sweet Ohm"?

Sly and The Family Stone "Everyday People" (actually he has lots.) Also, Prince "When You Were Mine." Then I like Dancing to reggae, so I could say The Harder They Come Soundtrack has all plenty of all three. Man, I just keep thinking of so much disco with heart and hips but not a lot of head. With so much dance music getting rid of the head seems to be the point, don't you think?

I think "Trans-Europe Express" is moving. There are lots of ways to be moving.

Plenty of ways to affect the head, too. If you like a song at all, I think you can find ways that it engages your mind. I'm not limiting myself to witty lyrics or complicated structures, though. Mind is more than that.

Nick D said: 'the lyrics to 'Mr Disco' could be said to be a little weak if you look at them one way'.

If I'm not mistaken, every lyric Bernard Sumner has ever written could be said to be a little weak, if you looked at them ten ways.

Outkast, "Ms. Jackson"; Destiny's Child, "Say My Name"; very nearly all of the Skitz album; the first side of Ultramarine's "United Kingdoms".

Sly Stone - 'I want to take you higher', Dee-lite - 'Groove is in the heart'.

Not to criticise anyone's nominations in particular, but it seems to me that the "head" part of this equation often means "hips songs that are accepted by the establishment" and the "heart" part means "hips songs I feel nostalgic when listening to". Suggests that maybe strictly functional music only aquires a cerebral/emotional character when it has surpassed the superficiality and essential "now"-ness so often associated with it.

Teen Age Riot (Sonic Youth), When It All Comes Down (Unrest), Even Time (the Coctails)

• Prince: Parade (only Prince record I really REALLY rate) • Cath Carroll: England Made Me • Talking Heads: Fear of Music • Pere Ubu: The Modern Dance (when they ROCKED) • The Fall: draGnet (their 'rockabilly' phase generally: "I just THINK THINK THINK" is a great line) • Gregory Isaacs, "No Speech, No Language" • Michael Jackson: Bad (his I-am-Mad-King-Ludwig-of-Bavaria phase: Madonna's cool, but MJ is the REALLY weird underdiscussed fucked-up superstar: recall "Still they hate you, you're a vegetable/.../they eat off of you, you're a vegetable", fr.'Wanna Be Starting Something', and his little innersleeeve cartoon of him and Paul McCartney dismembering a screaming girl: I mean, Swans are cool, too, y'know, but this is better).

"There But For The Grace Of God Go I" by Machine is fucking spectacular on all three counts.

Not to criticize Tim F, but I don't see what he means by 'hips songs that are accepted by the establishment'.

But then, I was never 100% sure what the terms of this question were anyway. It didn't stop me replying a couple of times.

For that matter, I'm not sure about that "strictly functional" bit... I think you'd have trouble pointing to any music which could sensibly be described as *strictly* functional, bearing in mind that the function is necessarily about how listeners use the music.

"Music For Bondage Performance"? Sounds fairly strict to me.

How you use your Radiohead collection is none of my concern, Mister Ewing.

Well, functional hip music. Music *primarily* designed to make you dance. When I listen to Sly & The Family Stone I don't hear the raptures of spirituality that everyone talks about. It's just dance music. The spiritual edge comes later I think, when it has aquired a context within history.

Hm, okay I forgot about _There's A Riot Goin' On_ obviously.

I think I disagree with your point in four ways, Tim, but we'll see. 1. I was balking at the word 'strictly', and I'm sure you'll agree that strictly and primarily mean very different things. 2. You're saying that (for example) Sly and the Family Stone made music which was 'just' dance music, and your evidence for this is that you don't 'hear the spirituality'. The fact that other people do is about context, which you of course have risen above. You can divine which parts of people's perception of a work are true understandings of the work itself (the dancing) and which are misreadings caused by 'later' cultural over-writing (the rest). 2. Everything has a context within history as soon as it exists. I grant you that this context may change. 3. Even music designed 'primarily' for dancing is, or can be, also music to listen to and engage with on some other level. That is, at least, until someone makes the record Bill Drummond dreamed about, a single, unadorned, 4/4 drumbeat. Someone would find interest in that too, most probably. 4) Sly and the Family Stone, as you note, is a spectacularly bad choice (even outwith "There's a Riot Going On"), because they were clearly engaging with politics and current affairs. Even if you are going to take the restrictive and most probably wrong view that the work of art really consists of what the artist intended, these particular artists intended to do a whole lot more than just make you dance. Yes, four ways.

Apologies for the lack of coherence in the half-finished posting above. I disagree with myself in considerably more than four ways, and the tone of the posting is a long way from my intention. Sorry.

I disagree with you in considerably more than four ways, too.

Fair points all, Tim. Some clarifications:

1. Yes, "strictly" was a bad choice of words. Was not thinking when writing, clearly. In my defence, I certainly wasn't using it in reference to Sly.

2. I do see Sly & Family Stone as spiritual even disregarding There's A Riot... (actually my favourite album of theirs is Dance To The Music - sorely underrated). My point was more that I think that they're held up against a lot of other 'dance' music that could equally be considered spiritual ("raptures of spirituality" somewhat obtusely referring to a state unobtainable by other disposable musics) as an example of a group that transcended the natural limits of body music. Often it's justified by a somewhat circular argument: they've stood the test of time, so they must be extra-spiritual, which is why they've stood the test of time.

Now maybe you or ninety-nine percent of the world think that in fact there is a disproportionately large amount of spirituality in their work compared to other dance music, and that's cool too. I suppose in these post-neuromancer times we should clarify when we're trying to assert aesthetic superiority and when we're not. Obviously I can't make a terribly convincing appeal to structuralist arguments in the case of rock and pop if I have to admit to being implicated by social context as well; I can either choose to pretend to believe my own opinions are right, or give in and become a Beatles fan.

3. Yes I agree with this.

4. Spectacularly bad, yes. My point however was not so much to cast doubt on the current interpretation of Sly, but more to question the self-perpetuating system which automatically enshrines it. My initial misgivings were actually prompted by a similar conversation I had with people at work, and all the familiar canon-certified names were mentioned. I don't think the answer is that the canon is infallible.

Is it wrong to be a Beatles fan?

Tim, as regards your (our) second point, you're right that we really should be able to express opinions without some idiot (me, in this case) going "that's only your opinion". What else could it be?

What I was trying to get at was that you seemed to imply that the stuff you heard was somehow "in" the music while the stuff other people heard wasn't and was a function of history. This may have been a misunderstanding of what you meant.

Sorry again for the tone of the whole thing.

Pinefox: I suspect by "Beatles fan" Tim meant someone who automatically venerates the Beatles above all the rest of pop, rather than just someone who quite likes their music.

Tim, my earlier statements were ill-expressed even for me. If we don't have people policing what we say, how do we become better at saying stuff? Anyway, the difficulty is that (as you sort of pointed out earlier) it's kind of impossible to separate music from context. Even if I'm right about the sense of spirituality being partially context based, are people who hear that spirituality incorrect? Of course not. I would as soon have to conclude that because patriarchy exists automatically all male-female relationships are ones of deliberate and malicious oppression. Or something like that.

And the way that I hear Sly, well that's my very specific context that anyone who reads my site will probably be aware of and sick of. It suits my (somewhat confused) purposes to continually push it, much in the same way that Robin seemingly can't resist answering slights to the British countryside.

Not "slights to the British countryside" per se, but suggestions that everyone in it is right-wing. And there have been plenty of bait from the other Tim which I didn't rise to.

To answer the original question, The Dismemberment Plan's "Back and Forth", for one.

i don't think i was ever really convinced that "back and forth" did anything to any parts of me. maybe head. anyway, i revived this to tell you that the real answer is "luckee star".

I can't believe that the Pet Shop Boys haven't been mentioned yet - surely the ultimate head-heart-and-hips band. Also, the latest Black Box Recorder album pushes all three buttons, too.

It's not hard to find pop songs which succeed in all three areas though; I mean, Xtina and Girls Aloud aren't as - for lack of a better word - intellectual as PSB or BBR, but when I'm dancing to them it's not all just mindless fun. And it's easy to intellectualise pop (and preferable to reading too much into Radiohead or whoever) - as Girls Aloud themselves sing, they're intellectual if you wanna blow their minds, spiritual whenever you're feeling low, emotional if you just wanna let go ("Everything You Ever Wanted").