“Dancing in the Street’ is the seventh song on Diver Down, and kicked off “side 2” of the album.
Eddie used a Mini Moog synthesizer in conjunction with his echoed guitar for the music in the song. He initially wanted the music to be for an original song. However, Dave and Donn Landee talked him into using it for this cover tune.
Dave: “It sounds like more than four people are playing, when in actuality there are almost zero overdubs – that’s why it takes us such a short amount of time [to record].”
Eddie: “It takes almost as much time to make a cover song sound original as it does writing a song. I spent a lot of time arranging and playing synthesizer on ‘Dancing in the Streets,’ and they [critics] just wrote it off as, ‘Oh, it’s just like the original.’ So forget the critics! These are good songs. Why shouldn’t we redo them for the new generation of people?’
Lyrics
Wow!
Ah yeah!
Calling out around the world, are you ready for a brand new beat.
Summer’s here and the time is right, for dancing in the streets,
They’re dancing in Chicago (They’ll be dancing)
Down in New Oreleans (Dancing in the streets)
Up in New York City (Dancing in the streets)
All we need is music (sweet sweet) sweet music (sweet sweet music)
There’ll be music everywhere.
There’ll be swinging, swaying, records playing, dancing in the streets, Oh!
It doesn’t matter what you wear, just as long as you are there,
So come on
Grab a guy, grab a girl, everywhere around the world.
There’ll be dancing, dancing in the streets.
(Oh)Its just an invitation, across the nation, a chance for folks to meet.
There’ll be laughing and singing, music swinging, dancing in the streets
All we need is music (sweet sweet) sweet music (sweet sweet music)
There’ll be music everywhere.
There’ll be swinging, swaying, records playing, dancing in the streets,Oh!
It doesn’t matter what you wear, just as long as you are there,
So come on
Grab a guy, grab a girl, everywhere around the world.
Dancing, dancing in the streets,
Way down in LA, everyday, dancing in the streets (Dancing in the streets)
San Francisco way, (Dancing in the streets), they do it everyday now,
(Dancing in the streets)