Here are a couple types of music that we advise against for the dance portion of your event. Whether you love this music or not, it rarely leads to an active dance floor.
Country: Great for slow tracks, horrible to keep the dance floor moving. I’m not saying that I have never had luck with it, but it is a rarity. Just because you like listening to something in your car doesn’t mean people want to dance to it.
Too Much Cultural Music: Being proud of your heritage and wanting to incorporate some cultural sounds into the night is a great thing, and you should, but you always want the percentage of music played to equal the percentage of people that would actually enjoy hearing it. If you have family in from Mexico that make up 10% of your total guest list than your playlist should include 10% ethnic tracks. Always work to please the masses. Doing the opposite results in a failed night.
Non Danceable or Obscure Tracks: This is for hipsters and music snobs mostly. We get it, Bonaroo was awesome and you found some new emerging bands that connected with you on an emotional level. Good thing you found them before the big wedding day so you can include 100 of their greatest hits to your playlist. You love them so everyone else will too??? No, no they won’t. In fact, they’ll hate them because they want to dance, and no one wants to dance to tracks that they don’t know at a wedding. Suck up your pride, and tolerate some Billboard Top 100 music. Sure you won’t look as cutting edge, but people might actually have fun. What’s the bigger priority? That emerging artist may fit in cocktail or dinner hour though....
Now, just because something is on the Billboard Top 100 doesn’t mean that it’s a heater either. Adele for instance…….for the most part not danceable. Great to listen to in the car, definitely not great for dancing. Trust your DJ, and let him guide you through tracks that work and tracks that don’t.