Wedding Songs

I’ve decided that a great indicator of just how much people love a particular song in pop culture is to hear how long they last on the wedding reception circuit.

Now, as you may or may not know, I’ve worked in more wedding receptions than I can remember, and thus I have heard more than my own share of dance songs, hip hop songs, novelty rock songs, country songs, novelty rap songs, etc., that have been used for the big party.  I’m usually stuck in the kitchen washing dishes, so I can usually only hear the songs, and rarely see the party that goes on outside in the reception hall. Regardless, after the first 200+ times hearing the music that is played, one oftentimes hears the same songs repeated over and over and over again. Now, having worked so many events, I’m sure I’ve doubled up occasionally on the same DJ’s, but I’m also sure that most of the time the DJ’s are different people. Now, with so many different DJ’s playing many of the same songs, one can assume that the songs that are picked by the majority of DJ’s and are played most repeatedly among events must have struck a very deep chord with the tens of thousands of people that have attended all the receptions that I’ve worked at.

So, I’ve come up with a small sampling of the songs that I’ve heard time and time again over the past two years working. I think it does a very good job at picking which songs are still loved by the public well after they and their accompanying albums have left the charts.

Now, let’s begin with the songs that have sprung up over the past two years that had a good amount of staying power when they were still on the radio, but died quickly afterwards:

“Laffy Taffy” by D4L

“Every Time We Touch” by Cascada

“Don’t Matter” Akon

“Run It!” by Chris Brown

“Promiscuous” by Nelly Furtado

“Umbrella” by Rihanna

“Beautiful Girl” by Sean Kingston

“Crank That Soulja Boy” by Soulja Boy

Everyone can be fairly certain that when you talk about classics, these songs will never be brought up. In fact, I bet in three years if you hear these songs, people will say, “wow, that song is really old” despite the fact that they’ll love even older songs and not say one word about it.

Now, there are certain songs that are relatively old, and are still being played around a bit, but not nearly as much as they were in their heyday. These songs are most likely in their twilight, and given a couple more years one will not hear them anymore at receptions:

“Hey Ya” by Outkast

“Hips Don’t Lie” by Shakira

“Sexyback” by Justin Timberlake

“Glamorous” by Fergie

“Drop It Like It’s Hot” Snoop Dogg

Now, for the songs that are the DJ’s best friend. They’re played at well over the majority of weddings I’ve worked, and I see no real slowdown in DJ’s playing them. These songs are loved by a very large chunk of the people at the reception, are always going to bring people to the dance floor, and should remain that way for years to come:

“All My Life” K-Ci and Jojo

“Don’t Wanna Miss a Thing” Aerosmith

“Hot In Herre” Nelly

“Hollaback Girl” Gwen Stefani

“Don’t Stop Believing” Journey

“Livin’ On a Prayer” Bon Jovi

“The Electric Slide”

“The Cha Cha Slide (Part 2)” by DJ Casper

“Friends In Low Places” Garth Brooks

“Billie Jean” Michael Jackson

“Thriller” Michael Jackson

“Love Shack” B-52’s

“Baby Got Back” Sir Mix-A-Lot

“Push it” Salt N’ Peppa

And the grandmaster of them all….

“Yeah!” by Usher

Seriously. “Yeah!” has been around for FOUR YEARS, and it might as well have been released last month. Now, I realize that a good portion of the songs on the list are older, but most of those are novelty songs that are really only suited for dances and wedding receptions. “Yeah!” however, was an extremely popular song in the charts, started being played at weddings when it was on the charts, and is still at it to this day. It has been played at more receptions than any other song I’ve ever heard, and I only started working two years ago. It’s practically given that this song will be played every single weekend.  I can say with full confidence that this song will be played at weddings five, ten, fifteen years from now, even though it doesn’t have the kind of niche that many of the songs have on the list, like the novelty rock of “Livin’ On a Prayer” or line dances like “The Cha Cha Slide.”