Dance With Somebody

Dance With Somebody single cover

Dance With Somebody is a song by The Midnight. It is the third single and third track from their album Monsters. The single was released on June 10, 2020.

Track info

The song was written by band members Tim McEwan and Tyler Lyle and produced by McEwan. The synth bass on Dance With Somebody was performed by Oliver McEwan and the saxophone was played by Thomas Edinger. It has a running time of four minutes and seventeen seconds and is in the key of A-flat major.

Tyler Lyle said about the song:

’Dance With Somebody’ is essentially telling the shy kid in the back of the class not to put up too many barriers and to take off your armor. Sometimes it’s Friday night and you just can’t help it, you have to go dancing.

In an interview with Magnetic Magazine, the band said about Dance With Somebody:

Tim: We had the hook sitting around for a long time but the verses were so hard to crack. It took us many re-writes to get it right. From a production standpoint I wanted this one to be a bop that you could throw on while getting ready to go out but while still having a deeper meaning behind it. Tyler: This was tricky. We re-wrote the verses to this at least four or five times. We knew what the hook was, and we knew we wanted the narrator to give a kind of invocation to lose yourself to the music. We carry so much armor around. I never thought much about dancing until I went to a religious college that forbade it. When I escaped that place (I only lasted a year), I decided to dance at every opportunity. Sometimes the only way out of your head is to get into your feet.

The Dance With Somebody poster seen in the single artwork is a slight variation of the poster for the 1987 movie Dirty Dancing. The faint caption below the title Dance with Somebody says "Some dance partners need a dance partner too...", a reference to a lyric in the song. Next to the poster is a taped note that says "Life's too short to dance by yourself ♥", which is another lyric reference.

Demo version

An early demo of Dance With Somebody was released as a prize during the Fall 2020 alternate reality game (ARG). Titled Dance with Somebody v5 GUIDE VOX (60%), it is considerably different from the final version. The demo is slower, has different instrumentation in some parts, is in a different key (B-flat major), has a different lyrical structure, and the vocals are sung a little differently in some parts. The second verse is missing and there are some other small variations in the lyrics. The demo has a guitar solo instead of a saxophone solo.

Track listing

All tracks are written by Tim McEwan and Tyler Lyle.

Dance With Somebody

No.	Title	Length
1.	"Dance With Somebody"	4:17
2.	"Deep Blue"	3:57
3.	"America Online"	5:49
Total length:		14:03

Lyrics

Take off your armor
Friend of mine
I have no arrows
But I got time

All your sorrows
Keeps you glued to your seat
Can we get you you outta your head
Into your feet

It’s not that the rest of us
Don’t have the blues
It’s just that some dance partners need a dance
Partner too
Is that you

Life’s too short to dance by yourself
Think you should dance with somebody
Life’s too short to dance by yourself
Think you should dance with somebody

Take off your armor
Let down your hair
You could sit on your hands or
You could get closer if you dare

And it’s not that the rest of us don’t have to fight
For every bit of love for and every bit of light
But tonight
It’s Friday night

Life’s too short to dance by yourself
Think you should dance with somebody
Life’s too short to dance by yourself
Think you should dance with somebody

Lyrics source