If there is one constant headfuck in my experience as a pole dancer it’s working out what bastard song to dance to. Be it a song for a competition or performance piece, what music I fancy listening to when training or even what song to stick on a reel, I’m forever plagued by the perils of choosing what song I want to move too.
After being grossly uninspired by my pole playlist for months on end, I damn near shat myself when I discovered a filthy as fuck song to add to it last week. This elite find made me realise how bloody stressful it had felt finding decent songs to dance to recently, because it never always used to be this way, at least it didn’t feel like it.
This problem first began for me back in 2016 during my baby pole dancer days. Prior to taking up swinging around a pole, my main hobby in life was all things heavy metal related, paying particular focus to death metal. You name it if the song had a truly vile title and a disgusting album cover, you can guarantee I was licking it’s arsehole. For anyone who’s unfamiliar with death metal, it sounds like this.
Now, as you can imagine, merging my two obsessions of death metal and pole dancing was no easy feat. Apart from the odd, chugging slower song (this classic by Morbid Angel is a good example of what I mean) it is nigh on impossible to choreograph a pole routine, or even a combo to death metal. Honestly if I had a quid for every time I would hear a barry banger of a song, put my choreo hat on then all of a sudden the tempo would get ridiculously fast and render it impossible to dance to I could have retired at twenty seven.
This irritating predicament was not just confined to death metal. For speed purposes dancing to Thrash metal was completely out of the question and some of my other favourite, speedy genres of noise have since disappeared from my Spotify Daily Mixes as a result of their difficulty to dance to. If you’re a fan of the heavy side of music, I recommend old school stuff (you can’t go wrong with Black Sabbath for literally anything) Nu-metal and Grunge for dancing to. Basically 90’s era metal was impeccable.
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Anyway, returning to the point of the post. It’s not just metal that creates pickle after pickle when it comes to choosing something to dance too. I’m a huge hip hop fan, but every time I find a cracking song to dance to I often need to track down the radio edit asap, as the lyrical content of many of my favourite rap and hip hop tracks are categorically not something a white, middle class woman should be dancing to for multiple reasons. If there is no radio edit available then that’s that song popped back on the shelf.
And don’t even get me started on trying to find a song to dance to in 2025 who isn’t from an artist who isn’t an absolute thunder cunt. I’m not getting into the whole “separating the art from the artist” debate here, it’s up to you to decide who you do or don’t want to dance to. However as someone who struggles to separate art from artist and prefers to air on the side of caution on that front, once again trying to source a decent dancing song can turn into a fucking headache. There’s been many a Norwegian Black Metal song that I’ve thought would make a cracking pole dance tune, only to discover the band are a bunch of raging N@zis. Then you have the whole issue surrounding predatory male musicians and whether you’re comfortable dancing to any of their music or not. The whole thing can become a bit of a quagmire of shite.
Often when selecting a song to dance to it can just boil down to a case of the vibe not quite hitting right. You’re all probably going to hate me for this, but Sleep Token are brilliant example here. One of their songs begins, a baby making riff starts to play, but then it all goes to shit when those god awful, whiny vocals kick in. Slayer are the same and basically any band with a whiny vocalist turns my poonani to dust and causes any inspiration to dance to disappear like a fart in the wind.
Picking a song to compete or perform to adds a whole other layer of complexity into the mix, as ideally you’ll want to pick a song that hasn’t been done to death. Obviously you can dance to whatever music tickles your pickle, but there’s nothing more annoying than finding a banger of a song only to discover that it’s been danced to shitloads previously (I’m looking at you River by Bishop Briggs). For showcases this doesn’t really matter, but for competitions it could work in your favour to bring something more original to the stage. There’s many a time I’ve found a cracking song, only to discover that I might look a bit like a Wish.com version of whatever pole dancers had previously performed to it if I attempted to do so!
Then you have the whole debacle of working out whether a certain genre of music best fits the category you’re competing in. For example, if I was entering an Old School, Stripper Style competition I would pick something slow and sensual to move to, not Who Let the Dogs Out by the Baha Men. I’m also proud to say I have attempted to bring death metal to the competition stage previously and whilst I was proud of my performances and happy with my feedback, I didn’t place, and to be honest with such a polarising music choice I’m not surprised.
If you’ve made it to the end of this rant you’re probably thinking “Jesus Christ on a fucking bike woman just put a song and dance to it.” However, if you’re also an easily bored, indecisive over thinker like me, maybe this one resonated!
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