IDMA 2008 Best Dance Tracks
Top Dance Music Songs from Winter Music Conference Miami 2008
The year's best underground, Euro, prog house/trance, jungle/DnB and breaks/electro dance tracks as voted for in the 23rd annual International Dance Music Awards 2008.
The 23rd annual International Dance Music Awards, a people’s choice award culled from 10,000 ballots, according to the award’s organizers, is nothing if not baffling this year.
Gabriel & Dresden were nominated again for “Dangerous Power” – the song they won for last year in the best alternative/rock track category. Apparently, the fact that the song appeared in the best progressive house/trance track category this year made it suitable for reconsideration.
Secondly, not only are the dance track categories already inexplicably spliced together (prog house/trance?) but two of the winning dance tracks won in two separate categories: Paul van Dyk’s “Let Go,” it seems, is the best alternative/rock/progressive house/trance track of the past year, and David Guetta’s “Love is Gone” is the best house/garage/breaks/electro track.
Certainly, these gentlemen are in top form and not to be begrudged their honors, but is dance music both so uncategorizable and so bereft of great purveyors that artists should win multiple categories with the same song?
And that the artists, in a year that delivered great stuff from Amuka and Eric Prydz, should be as obvious and as ineluctably mainstream as David Guetta and Paul van Dyk?
Lastly, DJ Rap, who after numerous years in the business is beginning to get some recognition at this year’s Winter Music Conference and elsewhere, won for best jungle/DnB track. This is great for her, and it’s a great song.
It’s also a song that she first released 8 years ago.
It’s not as if the song has been remixed or re-imagined in the interim; it’s merely been re-released as part of a compilation on a different label.
True, jungle isn’t as robust a category as it was a few years ago, and DnB is struggling, successfully it can be argued, to maintain its relevancy, but come on: a song that was recorded 8 years ago is best in show for this category?
Are these awards laughably rigged? Or is dance music in a deep state of crisis?
In any case, the results are in. The best dance tracks of the past year, as decided by voters in the 2008 International Dance Music Awards, are:
- Best Underground Dance Track: Home - Above & Beyond
- Best Alternative/Rock Dance Track and Best Progressive House/Trance Track: Let Go - Paul van Dyk
- Best Latin/Reggaeton Track: La Camisa Negra - Juanes
- Best HiNRG/Euro Track: White Lies - Paul van Dyk
- Best House/Garage Track and Best Breaks/Electro Track: Love Is Gone - David Guetta and Chris Willis
- Best R & B/Urban Dance Track: Umbrella - Rihanna feat. Jay-Z
- Best Rap/Hip Hop Dance Track: Stronger - Kanye West
- Best Jungle/DnB Track: Brave New World - DJ Rap & Kenny Ken
- Best Pop Dance Track: Say It Right - Nelly Furtado
- Best CD Compilation: The Annual 2008 - Ministry of Sound
- Best Full Length DJ Mix CD: In Search of Sunrise Vol. 6 - Tiesto
For more award-winning dance tracks, see Best Songs, IDMA 2007 and Dance Music Grammy Winners.
 |
 |
 |
 |
