After the rave explosion of the '90s, things quieted down on the dance music front in the early 2000s. With major crackdowns on both sides of the Atlantic, the scene retreated back to the clubs.

The music of the Aughts was all over the map in the very best way, with file sharing and randomly produced personal playlists encouraging eclecticism and experimentation in both artists and listeners.

What do we mean by “dance songs”? Good question. In a sense, any song that ever got any one person moving in any perceptible direction is a dance song. The Beatles made great dance songs — as did ...