Dance Stance

Album: Searching For The Young Soul Rebels (1979)
Charted: 40
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Songfacts®:

  • The first single by Dexys Midnight Runners, "Dance Stance" makes reference to a range of Irish playwrights and writers who arose from Kevin Rowland's Irish-Catholic background. "I was sick of hearing anti-Irish prejudice all the time from really thick people and the lyrics just spilled out of me," he recalled to The Guardian. "I had this biography of Brendan Behan and on the back it said: 'Some say Behan has the potency of Oscar Wilde...' and listed all these other great writers: Sean O'Casey, George Bernard Shaw and so on."

    Rowland added, "I'd heard of them – that was all – but thought: 'I'll put them in!' I don't think I was ever claiming to have actually read them. I was saying: 'If Irish people are so thick, how come they've produced all these great writers.'"
  • The song was originally titled "Burn It Down." The single release was changed to the less inflammatory "Dance Stance" at the suggestion of their then-manager Bernard Rhodes. When the Dexys re-recorded the song for their debut album, Searching for the Young Soul Rebels, they returned to the original "Burn It Down" title.

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