Tom Jones and The Art of Noise’s cover of Prince’s song, Kiss, has been rated one of the most danceable songs in history.

The 1988 release reached number five in the UK charts (and number one in Spain and New Zealand) and came 14th in the list of more than a list of 8,000 songs to appear in the UK top 10 singles chart.


Tom Jones dancing in the video for Kiss

The song was first recorded by in 1985 by Prince – who passed away at his home in Minneapolis yesterday at the age of 57 – and hit number one in the Billboard charts that year. It was the late singer’s third number one after When Doves Cry and Let’s Go Crazy.

Art of Noise and Jones’ cover was the band’s biggest hit and won the pair a MTV Video Music Award for its video .

Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby was found to be the most danceable chart song ever followed by Give It To Me by Justin Timberlake and featuring Nelly Furtado.

The extensive study was carried out by WalesOnline using data from Spotify’s The Echo Nest project which provides figures on nearly every song available on the music streaming service.


Justin Timberlake was on the list twice!

One of the attributes available from The Echo Nest service is the ‘danceability’ of a given song, a measure that describes how suitable a song is to dance to.

According to The Echo Nest: “The combination of musical elements that best characterize danceability include tempo, rhythm stability, beat strength, and overall regularity.”

So, due to the fact that Ice Ice Baby is repetitive with a regular beat it scores very highly for danceability, as does Eddy Grant’s Electric Avenue (the fourth most danceable top 10 track ever).

The list of the 20 most danceable songs is dominated by tracks from the past 30 years with just two tracks appearing in it from before 1986 – Einstein A Go-Go by Landscape and Electric Avenue.

At the other end of the spectrum London-born Phil Cordell – aka Springwater – created the least danceable song in chart history when he released I Will Return in 1971. The song achieved a danceability score nearly 10 times lower than Ice Ice Baby.

While the majority of songs in the top 20 were by American acts the majority of the songs in the bottom 20 are by British artists including Live Forever and Falling Down by Oasis, Radiohead’s Pyramid Song and Adele’s Oscar-winning Bond theme Skyfall.

Of the slightly more than 8,000 songs to have made the UK top 10 over the years around eight per cent were unavailable on Spotify’s Echo Nest data service and were therefore unable to be included in this study.

20 most danceable chart songs ever

1) Ice Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice / 18-11-1990

2) Give It To Me by Timbaland Ft Nelly Furtado / 08-04-2007

3) Trick Me by Kelis / 30-05-2004

4) Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant / 16-01-1983

5) Sexyback by Justin Timberlake / 03-09-2006

6) Pray by MC Hammer / 16-12-1990

7) Einstein A Go-Go by Landscape / 29-03-1981

8) Girlfriend by Pebbles / 17-04-1988

9) Anaconda by Nicki Minaj / 12-10-2014

10) When You Look At Me by Christina Milian / 23-06-2002

11) Midas Touch by Midnight Star / 19-10-1986

12) Wind It Up by Gwen Stefani / 10-12-2006

13) Push The Button by Sugababes / 02-10-2005

14) Kiss Ft Tom Jones by Art Of Noise Featuring Tom Jones / 30-10-1988

15) Trouble by Iggy Azalea Ft Jennifer Hudson / 03-05-2015

16) Kingston Town by UB40 / 08-04-1990

17) Hot In Herre by Nelly / 23-06-2002

18) Around The World by Daft Punk / 20-04-1997

19) Opposites Attract by Paula Abdul With The Wild Pair / 15-04-1990

20) Rudebox by Robbie Williams / 10-09-2006