The Five Best And Worst Dance Crazes Of All Time

Actually, you’re probably best avoiding all of them…

Friday, May 30, 2014 - 15:03

Musical whizzkid Baauer turns 25 on 30 May - an age by which most people haven’t been part of a global dance craze. His track ‘Harlem Shake’ took the Internet by storm when seemingly everybody put up their own version of its titular dance, and essentially crashed the world servers (actual technical term). So to celebrate, here are nine of the good, bad and ugly dance crazes that swept the planet (and peeved everybody off no end)…

Lean Back (As Made Famous By Terror Squad)

Why is this a good one? Because it’s EASY, alright? No complicated dance moves to remember - simply ‘lean back’ (not too far though) and you’ve nailed it. The song was pretty good too.

Saturday Night (As Made Famous By Whigfield)

A song this cheesy is hard to dislike really isn’t it? It’s not too difficult either. It came about at a time when the Internet wasn’t the all-encompassing soul-sucker that it is today, so it was a craze that stayed on the dance floor. Phew.

The Macarena (As Made Famous By Los Del Rio)

See: Saturday Night.

Cha Cha Slide (As Made Famous By Mr C The Slide Man, Obviously)

The great thing about this one is that you don’t need to memorise the steps because Mr C The Slide Man spells it all out for you as you go along! Simple. Also, if you hear this song, chances are you’re at a wedding, and who doesn’t love a wedding?

YMCA (As Made Famous By The Village People)

A classic. You can’t ‘have a go’ at this because it’s been around so long, and everybody knows the routine. No matter how much you say you hate cheesy novelty songs, we guarantee you’ve done this dance before, and we bet you absolutely LOVED it.

The Five Worst Dance Crazes

Harlem Shake (As Made Famous By Baauer)

Sorry Baauer. This was a hard one to include because not only do we like the song, we also thought the first couple of Harlem Shake videos were genuinely funny. But then it all got a bit out of control. Soon the mere mention of a Harlem Shake video sent chills down our spines - why does everyone always have to ruin anything good?

Crank That (As Made Famous By Soulja Boy)

A controversial one, ‘Crank That’ is to the great divider of opinion. Mainly included here because for some it was one of the worst songs to have ever entered the charts. It may be unlistenable, but don’t even try and deny that you didn’t attempt the moves.

Gangnam Style (As Made Famous By PSY)

We feel a bit bad putting this on here because when we first saw the video, we thought it was hilarious, and hitting a billion views on YouTube is a staggering achievement. So we’re not cussing you out, Psy - we’re cussing out all the idiots that felt the need to copy your dance at any given opportunity. The less said about the parody videos the better.

Whip My Hair (As Made Famous By Willow Smith)