How to Win Friends and Influence People

Alright, let's imagine a scenario: it's a Friday night, and you're chilling with your good friends Agnes, Agatha, Germaine and Jack Daniels. Like the reckless young people that you are, you're drinking and probably listening to some music. Something great comes on and everyone manages to get off the couch and dance. What happens next can go one of two ways: someone puts on a total jam and you've got a serious dance party on your hands OR there's a lull /bad song choice, and your friends all sit back down and develop headaches.

The moral of this story is that successfully DJ-ing a drunk dance party is harder than it seems. Many are called, few are chosen. Not to get too big for our britches, but Aubrey and I have been known to make some very drunk dancers very happy, and have taken upon ourselves the noble duty of compiling a few basic principles to keep in mind:

1) Don't just fall back on whatever's big in the top 40 right now. It may be a total club banger, but your DJ-ees could hear that at any damn bar they went to. Instead they're letting YOU (yes, you!) dictate the music, so use this vote of confidence to showcase your connoisseurship and take them on a magic carpet ride through the decades! Switch out Bad Romance with Another Night or any song ever with Return of the Mack.

2) It's a dance party, not a middle school dance, so no slow jams are allowed. It has to be 100% danceable otherwise your guests will have time to realize their lack of sobriety and totally lose momentum. U Remind Me of a Girl? Perfect. Let it Burn? Not nearly as good.

3) If you don't play the Remix to Ignition (hot and fresh out the kitchen) your party is a failure and no one will ever talk to you again.

4) Don't change mid-song. Under any circumstances. This should be obvious, but our trust has been betrayed too many times, and you know what they say: fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on ME. Preventing other people from committing this unforgivable mistake requires a potent combination of vigilance and belligerence.

5) Deal with requests on a case-by-case basis, not everyone is as tasteful as you. And never relinquish control of the iPod/DJ table/CD rack to the drunk jerk who only wants to hear Single Ladies on repeat. Your friends are drunk and you control the music. You are their god.

In other words, it should end like this: