However, “Shut Up and Dance” doesn’t work despite these clichés, but because of how effectively it executes them, and how great it feels when you can dance and sing along with them. The four-on-the-floor beat (God bless it), a singer declaring “this woman is my destiny” and a breakdown with the inevitable audience-clapping already inserted (genius!). Now, I stand by what I said - “Shut Up and Dance” is a cookie-cutter rock song. And everyone screams along to the chorus, because why the hell wouldn’t you scream along? After way too much denial, I realize this plain old rock song is a fucking hit. Suddenly, the choppy opening guitar notes of “Shut Up and Dance” echo around the room. Then, my Twitter timeline seemed unusually excited for Walk the Moon’s show in Detroit back in April - an interesting blip on my radar, but not much more.įinally, not long after the concert, I go to a party and pretty good music is playing, but nothing out of the ordinary - the great ’00s nostalgia trips and the best hits of this school year. First, it was innocuous enough for me to dismiss - I caught the closing notes as I walked into a store, and I picked it up from a passing car on State Street. I even, regretfully, deleted “Anna Sun” off my iPod.īut, like the whispers of that secret you knew no one would ever find out about, “Shut Up and Dance” came back to me. I didn’t listen to the radio at school, and I got caught up in other new releases - very few of which were from rock bands. That was August 2014, and in the subsequent seasons, Walk the Moon slowly slipped out of my consciousness. Bands come out with new singles every day, and “Shut Up and Dance” didn’t have what it would take to avoid quickly getting lost in the shuffle. Bland guitar chords, a catchy cookie-cutter chorus and no signs of innovation - this song wouldn’t last the rest of the month. Then I heard “Shut Up and Dance” when it was first released, and it pretty much confirmed my prediction.
I put the track on my iPod thinking that in a short time I’d scroll across the title and it would stick out like that guy who wore a Mitt Romney mask to last year’s Halloween party. That said, I didn’t expect to hear much more from Walk the Moon after “Anna Sun.” It was one of those huge songs that felt like a big hit if you listened primarily to the Alt Nation channel on Sirius and drove around with friends who’d sing along when it came on that station. I’ve always been a huge fan of The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party and those other new wave revivalists, so if a band can take the characteristics of these bands - huge choruses, disco-influenced backbeats and rough lyrics about “towns” and/or needing to get out of them - and distill them skillfully into a new four-minute composition, my acceptance is basically a given. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Walk the Moon’s first single, “Anna Sun,” as much as anybody.
I’ll be the first to admit that I didn’t see it coming.
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