Diversion 2.0 Thirty Day Song Challenge -- Day 11: A Drinking Song

Taio Cruz – "Dynamite"



This may surprise you, readers, but when I was younger, I made a point not to drink until I turned 21. It may have been a sense of obligation to follow the law, but I think it was mostly paranoia that I would get caught. Regardless, I went out of my way to avoid drinking, even in places where it was legal to drink at my current age.

After I turned 21, I enjoyed me some drank every now and again, but frequent rum-buying isn’t necessarily easy on a college kid’s budget, and gittin’ my drink on was saved for special occasions.

When I graduated and finally snagged a job, I figured it was time to cut loose. I’m a bit of a social butterfly, so I usually hit downtown Bozeman about every other weekend, meeting friends at what passes for the club and getting down on the floor because, dammit, I just wanna dance. It slowly became rather expensive, and I eventually stopped going after it became difficult to find friends to go. Summer time is just around the corner, though, so I may yet have to go back because, let’s face it, I just wanna dance.

In my opinion, I picked quite a good year to become a bar crawler, because the summer of 2010 had some of the best club anthems I’ve ever heard, all right in a row. “Tik Tok,” “Telephone,” “Rude Boy,” “DJ Got Us Falling In Love,” and many others were the soundtrack to my night, which generally involved me heading to the downtown area, hitting all of the six or so bars within a block of each other, and taking my bike home. My favorite spot had regular live DJs and an actual dance floor, and the place seemed like a club with a little suspension of disbelief.

Of all of the party anthems of 2010, and there were many, my favorite was Taio Cruz’s “Dynamite.” Perhaps there were other songs I liked more at the time (they were probably also produced by Dr. Luke), but “Dynamite” perfectly captures the celebratory feeling I was having at the time. It’s also one of the easier club songs to sing along with (“Aaaayyyyy-oh, baby leeetttt’s go!”), giving the song a group participation feel, similar to “YMCA,” but with less construction workers or police chiefs.

To this day, “Dynamite” firmly ties me to my summer of 44 North and lemonade, so much so that it legitimately feels weird to listen to outside of a club.