WK: Booty Moving Beats #1217

Thirty-one tracks for the last Friday of November 2017 leading into December — the variant edition of the standard December Kickoff, weighted toward the dance-floor cuts for the year-end celebrations. The friend group requested it specifically. They wanted the dance-leaning version of the standard tape, with the same DNA but the floor-fillers front-loaded.

U2 anchor the legacy-rock-anthem spine that opens the run. The band had released “Songs of Experience” in December that year and the late-tour singles were still in rotation. Wale brings the slick-rap-radio crossover with “My Love,” the cut that defined the year’s late-rotation hip-hop-pop-electronic crossover. The Major Lazer VIP Remix is the version on the playlist because the remix is faster, harder, and the dance-floor variant absolutely demands the extended cut.

The Beaches “Money” sits second. The Toronto band’s catalog had been on the group chat’s rotation for half the year by December and the song still hit. Post-Strokes alt-rock with a vocal that’s all attitude and almost no melody — the kind of song that works in any context because the energy is the whole point.

Tash Sultana “Jungle” follows. The Australian one-person-band’s loop-pedal performances had been my favorite YouTube discovery of the year. The studio version captures less of the live energy than the live versions do, but “Jungle” is the cut where the studio arrangement translates the loop-pedal aesthetic into something that works on its own. The track is over seven minutes and earns every minute.

The Revivalists “Wish I Knew You” was the slow-burn radio hit of the year. The song had been out for over a year before it crossed over into mainstream rotation — the kind of track that takes its time finding its audience. By December 2017 the song was inescapable, but the placement is honoring the audience the friend group had been part of from the beginning. Lauv “Easy Love” carries the deliberate-saccharine pop pull — the kind of song you sing in the shower without remembering where you heard it.

Busta Rhymes with Vybz Kartel and Tory Lanez “Girlfriend” — the Extended Version — is the dancehall-rap bridge. The dance-floor variant needed the extended cut specifically, because the radio edit doesn’t give the song enough room to develop. Busta’s catalog had been quietly excellent through the second half of the decade and the streaming-era’s working-rotation has tended to undervalue what he was producing. “Girlfriend” is the cut that proves the point.

Foo Fighters “The Sky Is A Neighborhood” is the rock-radio anchor. Grohl writes for arenas and the song earns the description — the chorus is the kind of thing you can hear from a parking lot. The placement late in the rotation is sequencing the back-third for the post-dinner energy lift.

Jasmine Thompson “Mad World” closes. The original is a Tears for Fears song from 1982 that Gary Jules covered for Donnie Darko in 2001. Thompson’s version is the dance-pop remix of the Gary Jules cover of the original — three generations of the same song. The friend group appreciated the music-history chain when I pointed it out. The chain itself is the reason the song works in this rotation — it’s a 35-year-old composition that’s been recontextualized into the streaming-era pop-radio context without losing what made the original work.

The back half pulls into the late-2017 rap-radio singles — Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” peak, Migos features, the Drake catalog that had been quietly running through the rotation all year. The dance-floor variant means the dance-floor pulls are front-loaded; the slower-tempo cuts sit in the back third where the audience can ride them after the peak block has done its work.

Thirty-one tracks. About two hours. Played twice the week it dropped. Both times before midnight. The friend in the group chat who’d specifically requested the dance-variant texted me on the second playback to say his neighbor had come over to ask what was playing. That’s the metric. The standard December edition is for the broader-audience kitchen-cleanup context; the dance-floor variant is for the friends who wanted the floor-fillers committed to from the first track.

The dance-floor variant became the editions the friend group requested for year-end celebrations. The December version specifically lived in the rotation for years after — replayed at New Year’s parties, sent around as the reference tape for what the late-2017 dance-floor sounded like. The cuts have aged better than the year-end critics gave them credit for.