"How to Dance" is a song by Austrian

house music House is a genre of electronic dance music characterized by a repetitive Four on the floor (music), four-on-the-floor beat and a typical tempo of 115–130 beats per minute. It was created by DJs and music producers from Chicago's underground ...

trio

Bingoboys Bingoboys was an Austrian dance music trio from Vienna consisting of DJs Klaus Biedermann, Paul Pfab and Helmut Wolfgruber. They had two chart entries on the U.S. ''Billboard'' Hot Dance Club Play chart in 1991. Their debut single, " How to Danc ...

from their debut studio album, ''The Best of Bingoboys''. The song features American female

rapper Rapping (also rhyming, flowing, spitting, emceeing, or MCing) is an artistic form of vocal delivery and emotive expression that incorporates "rhyme, rhythmic speech, and ommonlystreet vernacular". It is usually performed over a backing ...

Princessa. The song was first released in the United States in 1990 and was given a European release in March 1991. "How to Dance" peaked at number two in Austria and reached the top 10 in Australia, Denmark, Finland, and the Netherlands. In the US, it climbed to number 25 on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100 and topped the ''Billboard''

Hot Dance Club Play The Dance Club Songs (also known as National Disco Action, Hot Dance/Disco Club Play, and Hot Dance Club Play) was a chart published weekly between 1976 and 2020 by ''Billboard'' magazine. It used club disc jockeys set lists to determine the mos ...

chart for one week in March 1991. The

music video A music video is a video that integrates a song or an album with imagery that is produced for promotion (marketing), promotional or musical artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a music marketing device intended to ...

for the song was nominated for an

MTV MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...

Video Music Award in the category of "Best Dance Video", but it lost out to "

Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now) "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" is a song by American dance music group C+C Music Factory, released by Columbia Records on November 18, 1990, as the lead single from their debut album, '' Gonna Make You Sweat'' (1990). The song is su ...

" by the

C+C Music Factory C+C Music Factory was an American musical group formed in 1989 by David Cole and Robert Clivillés. The group is best known for their five hit singles: " Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)", " Here We Go (Let's Rock & Roll)", " Things ...

Composition

The song borrows heavily from a number of earlier recordings, including "

Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah) "Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)" is a song by American R&B band Chic. It was the group's first single, a hit in the United States (reaching number 6 on both the pop and R&B charts), as well as in the United Kingdom and Canada. In ...

" by the band

Chic Chic (; ), meaning "stylish" or "smart", is an element of fashion. It was originally a French word. Etymology '' Chic'' is a French word, established in English since at least the 1870s. Early references in English dictionaries classified ...

, "

Dance (Disco Heat) "Dance (Disco Heat)" is a song by American singer Sylvester. The song appears on his 1978 album '' Step II'' and features backing vocals by Two Tons O' Fun. Chart performance The song was Sylvester's first Top 40 hit in the United States, where it ...

" by the disco singer

Sylvester Sylvester or Silvester is a name derived from the Latin adjective ''silvestris'' meaning "wooded" or "wild", which derives from the noun ''silva'' meaning "woodland". Classical Latin spells this with ''i''. In Classical Latin, ''y'' represented a ...

, "

Kiss A kiss is the touching or pressing of one's lips against another person, animal or object. Cultural connotations of kissing vary widely; depending on the culture and context, a kiss can express sentiments of love, passion, romance, sex ...

" by

Art of Noise Art of Noise (also the Art of Noise) were a British avant-garde synth-rock group formed in early 1983 by engineer/producer Gary Langan and programmer J. J. Jeczalik, along with keyboardist/arranger Anne Dudley, producer Trevor Horn, and ...

feat.

Tom Jones Tom Jones may refer to: Arts and entertainment *Tom Jones (singer) (born 1940), Welsh singer *Tom Jones (writer) (1928–2023), American librettist and lyricist *''The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling'', a novel by Henry Fielding published in 1 ...

, the popular

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, songwriter, dancer, musician, and record producer. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th-century music, he is referred to by Honorific nick ...

Yeah! Woo! The Think break is a drum break that has been widely sampled in popular music. It comes from the 1972 song " Think (About It)" by the American soul singer Lyn Collins, written and produced by James Brown. The drum break was performed by John " ...

" sample loop, the bassline motif from

Mantronix Mantronix was an influential 1980s hip hop and electro (music), electro funk music group from New York City. The band was formed by Disc jockey#Hip Hop DJs, DJ Kurtis Mantronik (Kurtis el Khaleel) and rapper MC Tee (Touré Embden). The group is ...

's single " Got to Have Your Love", and a

synth A synthesizer (also synthesiser or synth) is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis a ...

motif from

The Whispers The Whispers are an American vocal group from Los Angeles, California. Scoring hit records since the late 1960s, they are best known for their two number-one R&B singles, " And the Beat Goes On" in 1979 and " Rock Steady" in 1987. The Whispers ...

' " And the Beat Goes On". In addition, the song contains audio samples from an instructional recording from the 1970s that attempted to teach people "how to dance" (for example, ''Step left, around, and together with the right'').

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Release history

References