"I Can't Dance" | ||||||||||
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Single by Genesis | ||||||||||
from the album We Can't Dance | ||||||||||
B-side | "On the Shoreline" | |||||||||
Released | 30 December 1991 | |||||||||
Format | CD maxi, 7" single, 12" maxi | |||||||||
Recorded | The Farm, Surrey; March 1991 – September 1991 | |||||||||
Genre | Dance-rock, blues rock | |||||||||
Length | 4:01 | |||||||||
Label |
Atlantic (U.S.) Virgin |
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Writer(s) | Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford | |||||||||
Producer(s) | Genesis, Nick Davis | |||||||||
Genesis singles chronology | ||||||||||
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"I Can't Dance" is the fourth track from the Genesis album We Can't Dance and was the second single from the album. The song peaked at number seven on both the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart and received a Grammy Award nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocals in 1993.
During one recording session, Mike Rutherford first created the main riff of the song he called "Heavy A Flat", to which Phil Collins suddenly improvised "I Can't Dance!" The riff was actually inspired by a Levi Strauss & Co. TV commercial (in the studio, the song was created under the working title "Blue Jeans") using The Clash song "Should I Stay or Should I Go". Originally the band did not think of it as anything more than a joke, because the song was too simple, too bluesy and completely unlike Genesis' style. Tony Banks said in an interview "It was one of those bits you thought was going to go nowhere. It sounded fun, but wasn't really special".
It was not until Banks added the keyboard sound effects that the song took on a whole different feeling—with a slight edge of humour in it—which made the band decide to record it.
Banks also said in an interview that it showed a kind of direction Genesis could have gone in. Opposite to what Genesis has done as general practice, which is taking an idea and turning it into a long or complex composition, it was just taking an idea, and leaving it alone.
The music video (directed by Jim Yukich) illustrates the artifice and false glamour of television advertisements. Collins commented that the video was designed to poke fun of the models in jeans commercials, and each verse refers to things that models in these commercials do. It begins with Collins (in blue jeans and T-shirt) standing on the side of a remote dusty road hitchiking when a speeding Porsche 911 goes by, it then reverses and the attractive women inside lets in a lizard instead, leaving Collins standing there. The ending is a parody of Michael Jackson's "Black or White" music video, depicting Collins imitating the "Panther ending" in which Jackson dances erratically. Banks and Rutherford eventually arrive to escort Collins off the set, at which point he goes limp and they have to drag him away.