BLOOD ON THE DANCE FLOOR

I wrote “Blood on the Dance Floor” after a stretch where work had pretty much taken over my brain.

My manager was away, which meant I was carrying more responsibility than usual. More decisions. More meetings. More things that needed an answer from me.

The workload itself wasn't really the problem.

The problem was that I stopped wanting to make music.

For months, it had been getting harder to sit down and write. Ideas weren't coming as easily. Melodies weren't showing up. I'd start things and leave them unfinished.

That bothered me.

Music is usually the thing I want to do when everything else is finished. Suddenly I didn't even want to do that.

So I locked myself in my studio for two days.

I slept maybe three hours.

Probably not the healthiest creative process I've ever had, but it worked.

“Blood on the Dance Floor” came out of those two days.

THE MEANING

Despite the title, the song isn't actually about violence.

The blood is consequence.

It's the stuff we leave behind after making decisions, screwing things up, trying again, hurting people, helping people, succeeding, failing, changing.

The dance floor is just life.

That's really it.

There's blood on the dance floor because none of us gets through life without leaving some kind of mark on it.

And somehow we keep dancing anyway.

The first lines basically established the whole song:

“I don't know where I'm going

But I can't stay here.”

I think I've felt that way plenty of times in my life.

You don't necessarily know what the next thing is. You just know that whatever you're doing now isn't working anymore.

Later I wrote:

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned and

Mother, forgive me because you know this won't be the last time.”

That isn't really a religious line for me.

It's an admission that I'm probably going to fuck up again.

We all have things we swear we're going to stop doing. Patterns we're going to break. Things we're going to handle differently next time.

And then sometimes we don't.

“I know this won't be the last time” is probably more honest than promising that it will be.

The song isn't really asking for absolution. It's recognizing the mess and wanting to be better anyway.

That's where:

“I know I want something more than this”

comes from.

I don't mean success. I don't mean more listeners or money or some bigger version of Prophets of the Cosmic Darkness.

I mean wanting more from myself.

THE SOUND

Everything in the song is synthesizers and vocals.

No guitars.

I spent an embarrassing amount of time on the vocal chain.

I kept adding things because I thought the vocal needed to sound bigger or more professional. Every new version technically sounded more polished.

It also sounded less like me.

Eventually I started deleting things.

The final chain became pretty simple: compression, a little chorus, reverb and echo.

That was basically it.

And suddenly the vocal worked.

There's probably a lesson in there about my tendency to keep touching things after they're already finished.

Sometimes adding another plugin isn't the answer.

Sometimes you just need to stop.

TWO DAYS LATER

When I finished the song, none of the stuff that had been exhausting me had disappeared.

The emails were still there.

The meetings were still there.

I still had work to do.

But I wanted to make music again.

That's what mattered.

I don't think music removes me from the rest of my life. If anything, writing songs tends to make me deal with things I've been ignoring.

This one happened to remind me that I still knew how to write a song.

Apparently I just needed to lock myself in a room for two days.

LYRICS

I don’t know where I’m going

But I can’t stay here

Are you near?

There’s blood on the dance floor

I’ve seen this before

I know it all too well

Is this hell?

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

I know I made it happen again

Not going back

Not going back

There’s blood on the dance floor

At least we can dance more

In the moonlight

Our spotlight

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

Father, forgive me for I have sinned and

Mother, forgive me because you know this won’t be the last time

It won’t be the last time

I know I want something more than this

I know I want something more here on the dance floor

I’m thinking we’ll dance some more

To this solo

I said, DANCE

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

There’s blood on the dance floor

Goodnight and goodbye