B-side Drum Talk, She Cries Recorded Summer 1983 Length 3:36 | Format 7" Single, 12" single Genre Pop rock
new wave | |
Released 2 April 1984 (1984-04-02) | ||
"Dancing Girls" is a song by the English singer-songwriter Nik Kershaw. It was the third single from his debut album, Human Racing, and released on 2 April 1984. It charted on 14 April 1984, and reaching a peak position of No. 13 in the UK Singles Chart. It stayed on the charts for nine weeks.
Contents
Lyrics
Kershaw explained the song to Number One magazine in September 1984:
"Dancing Girls" is about a bloke a bit down on his luck. He's got a job and everything but he's bored sick with the routine of getting up, going to work, coming home, watching the telly, going to bed ... in the end he's saying, "For God's sake, bring on the dancing girls! Let something exciting happen to me for a change." But again the idea was exaggerated.
Video
The external street scenes for the music video for "Dancing Girls" were filmed in the dead-end section of Woodberry Grove, Finchley, North London. It depicted Kershaw as the subject of the song's lyrics, an advertising executive, imagining himself dancing with a group of middle aged dancers, including a six foot tall traffic warden, deliberately juxtaposed against Kershaw's 5'3" frame. The video was intended to be light-hearted, following on from the much darker video for Kershaw's previous single, "Wouldn't It Be Good".
Track listing
7" Single (MCA NIK 3)
A "Dancing Girls" (Remixed Version) - 3:36 B "She Cries" - 3:4512" Single (MCA NIKT 3)
There were four different UK 12" releases for "Dancing Girls", all sharing the same catalogue number
Reviews
Reviewer Paul Sinclair of website "Super Deluxe Edition" said of the song:
...third single "Dancing Girls" is an outstanding piece of pure electro/synth pop that walks in the shadow of little in that era.
Meanwhile, Lisa Kalloo of Somojo2 said:
Dancing Girls captures the essence of teenybopping yesteryears. Is it any wonder that the likes of Eric Clapton held Nik in high esteem? Nope, because this is a classic example of British synthy-pop at its best.
However, she was critical of the extended mix:
Dancing Girls doesn’t seem to add anything that makes it stand out from the original save the obvious extensions and popping, blippy synths, extended synth drum beats and added vocal samples but if you were a fan way back in the day, I guess this would be another one to add to the collection.