Disco dance percussion in folk revival anthems of the 2010s

In 2020 I wrote extensively on the role of accenting the offbeats in the rhythm to maximize the danceability of a song. See this final survey post, and the three background posts linked in the first paragraph there.

To summarize, though: music and dance are intertwined, the main beats are matched with the delivery motion in the dance, while the offbeats are matched with the winding-up motions in the dance. Letting loose on the main beat requires you to have wound up decently well during the offbeat. To encourage that winding-up motion, the rhythm section accents the offbeat to draw your attention to it.

"Hey, you're supposed to be doing something important here! Like winding up your leg so you can swing it as far as possible for delivery on the main beat." Or winding up your arm, in order to deliver the hardest punch-in-the-air on the main beat, for those who are doing something as simple as fist-pumping.

During the techno danceclub craze of the '90s and early 2000s, the UNH-tsss drum rhythm became so saturated that the electronic danceclub musicians tried to wipe it out during the rest of the 2000s and 2010s. They used the synths as rhythmic instruments, in place of a multi-piece percussion set. This was the hallmark of electroclash, and then electropop.

However, if a genre of music was not closely associated with danceclubs, they were not as beholden to the crusade to eliminate percussion from the rhythm section. Most notable was the dance-rock craze of the 2000s and early 2010s, where disco-style drumming -- with a hi-hat accenting the offbeat -- was ubiquitous. Singer-songwriters could get away with it, too, such as pianist Vanessa Carlton in "Ordinary Day" early in the decade, and rock-oriented Orianthi in "According To You" later on.

As for mainstream mega-hits, though, no genre was more obsessed with using percussion to accent the offbeat than the folk revival craze of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Folk is usually associated with any location and any occasion *other than* boogeying down in a danceclub. So it was free of the stigma against UNH-tsss drum kits.

Within this campaign of the disco drumming reconquista, the opening salvo was fired by the song everybody unfairly loved to hate at the time, but which has gained "familiar fave" canonical status by now -- "Hey, Soul Sister" by Train, from 2009.



It gradually builds its rhythmic power until 2:50, when the distinctly disco hi-hat comes in for the offbeat, and then begins to really ring out during most of the offbeat interval in the choruses afterward. It's commanding your body to not just sit in your seat as though this were a typical singer-songwriter romantic ballad with cheesy lyrics. No! -- this is the climax, now you're supposed to get up, move around, and cut a little rug with the rest of the crowd!

Even a slow-tempo song like "Ho Hey" by the Lumineers, from 2012, uses a tambourine on the offbeat during the chorus, to motivate their irony-poisoned hipster audience to stand up and shake the snark free from their bodies, before returning to their lounging posture during the verses.

And even if the tone was brooding, a fast-paced song like "Stolen Dance" by Milky Chance, from 2012, uses hi-hats on the offbeats, and a heavy bass drum on the main beats, in a familiar disco percussion rhythm.

By far the closest alliance between the folk and disco genres was Avicii. In "Wake Me Up" from 2013, the folk-inflected verses use handclaps on the offbeat -- the trad percussion instrument for the trad passages of the song. Then during the electro-danceclub choruses, the familiar hi-hat from the disco era comes in on the offbeat. There's the same dynamic in "Hey Brother," but it's not as extensively worked out.



Also from 2013, the final major entry in the genre came from Down Under, in Vance Joy's "Riptide". (For whatever reason, the big British group from the 2010s folk revival, Mumford and Sons, kept percussion out of the offbeat, and relied on rhythmic strumming from the banjo or acoustic guitar.) It's going much further back than the mellow '60s hippie folk songs, evoking the frenetically kicking bodies of Jazz Age danceclubs, similar to the folk / old-timey dance jazz group the Squirrel Nut Zippers from the late '90s. It would've been totally natural to slip this song into the playlist at the trendy Great Gatsby-themed Charleston-dancing flapper parties of the time.