Overview
Dance’s title is somewhat ironic, as virtually none of its tracks are danceable; indeed it is probably the least danceable album Numan has ever recorded. With synth pop music in the mainstream by 1981, Numan made a conscious effort to craft a more sombre, personal and musically experimental album, in a jazzier vein than its predecessors.
The album's sound constitutes quite a break in style from the powerful, thick analogue synth arrangements of Numan's earlier hit releases. Side One of the album consists of four long, sparse, slow-tempo minimalist songs, with the rhythm tracks based largely around muted drum machine patterns. The style is not dissimilar to some of the more ambient work by Brian Eno, particularly his solo album Another Green World and collaborations with David Bowie on Low and "Heroes", and tracks by the band Japan such as '"The Tenant" and "Despair". Side Two of the album contains shorter, more conventional songs. One of these, "Moral", took the tune from Numan's 1979 song "Metal", changing its lyrics into an attack on the New Romantic movement.
Numan's commercial success by this period enabled him to enlist several guest musicians to perform on the album, including guitarist Rob Dean and (fretless) bassist/saxophonist Mick Karn of Japan, drummer Roger Taylor of Queen, keyboardist Roger Mason of Australian band Models, and Canadian alternative musician Nash the Slash (who had performed live with Numan in 1980 and 1981).
The songs' lyrics deal largely with tragic sexual relationships, examined in a manner similar to the often bleak and alienating relationships between people and technology that informed earlier songs such as "Down in the Park" and "Are 'Friends' Electric?". The opening track "Slowcar to China" is a nine-minute opus about a prostitute. "Night Talk" is about a man dealing with a lover who is a drug addict (aptly co-written with close friend and former bass-player, Paul Gardiner, himself a heroin addict). "Cry the Clock Said" is a nearly ten-minute ballad about a breakup, widely considered one of Numan's most beautiful songs. The salsa-flavoured "She's Got Claws" is about a predatory woman, written as an embittered response to an ex-girlfriend who sold the story of their relationship to the tabloids. The melancholic "Stories" describes an accidental café reunion between a woman and her son by a failed relationship.
Reaction to the album was mixed, some critics applauding what they saw as a less commercial career move and others viewing the change of pace with cynicism. A few years after Dance's release Numan conceded, "if I was supposed to be a pop star doing music for the masses, it probably wasn't the right thing to do", but he praised the standard of playing on it. "She's Got Claws" was the album's sole single release, making number 6 in the UK charts, whilst the album itself peaked at number 3. It was Numan's first album to miss the number 1 spot since Tubeway Army's debut album in 1978, dropping out of the charts after 8 weeks. Interestingly, the song titled "Dance" does not appear on the album, and was only released years later as a CD bonus track.
The cover shows Numan wearing a Trilby hat pulled low over his brow. This was to hide a receding hairline, which he had corrected with hair transplant surgery a few months later.
Numan very rarely performs any music from the album in concert. However live recordings and visual footage of "She's Got Claws", "Cry the Clock Said" and "Moral" ("Metal") appear on Numan's video/DVD Micromusic and album Living Ornaments '81, taken when they were previewed prior to the release of Dance at his Wembley 'farewell' concerts in April 1981. An early live recording of "Stories" also came to light in 2005 when Beggars Banquet released the expanded Living Ornaments '80 album on CD. Numan performed "Crash" and "Boys Like Me" during club dates in the US in 1982 but they have not been officially released, while "Night Talk" was performed live in 2004 to mark the 20th anniversary of Paul Gardiner's death, Numan's longtime bassist and co-writer of the track.
On his website on 30 March 2010, Numan mentioned that "Crash" was one of the songs rehearsed for his set at the Manchester and London "Back to the Phuture" shows.
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