Even Calvin Harris is changing to mid-tempo dance now. 'Slide' and 'Heatstroke' (his upcoming release) are both mid-tempo and RnB influenced. I think he's realised trends are changing and so won't be releasing club bangers for a while.

I mean I'm still praying for Bieber to come back with a trance record...

Exactly. If enough artists actually made different stuff it'd break this quagmire we're in.

I was (am?) hoping 'You Don't Know Me' being a big hit might shake things up a bit.

Agree with the above that it takes a big artist making a stand for a real change to emerge, but even then it's not easy. Not convinced that a wave of songs that sound like "Castle On The Hill" or "Galway Girl" are coming to take the charts by storm, but maybe it could be so?

I like the Julia Michaels song. However, I think it could do with a slight remix or something, coz it feels a little too empty for me to fully get on board with it. It's nice enough as it is I guess and I guess that's part of the appeal to some people, but for me it feels like it's lacking some kind of kick to switch it up a gear, to go from "good" to "great".

Yeah that was actually my whole point (though I probably didn't word it very well) - that uptempo dance doesn't seem to do as well these days (with Jax Jones, like you say, being an exception along with Calvin Harris). I think that's the reason acts like Galantis and Sigala are struggling to get big hits like they used to. Disciples would also have been bigger if they'd been releasing their current stuff a couple of years ago. Let's hope Calvin restores order with a big club banger soon!

The Jax Jones one is still very minimal, it isn't that lively really in terms of the history of dance, although by modern chart dance standards it is.

Cloudbusting - Just Us is quite uptempo by modern dance standards however, the Everytime It Rains version was more uptempo, almost up to the lively standards of Tears by Clean Bandit last year in terms of their genre of orchestral house. When they took out the original euphoric climax it became more chilled.

It really is overall a terrible time for chart dance I think. Most of it is very watered down and poppy.

Clean Bandit aren't exactly making club banger music though, it's mostly uptempo yes but as you say it's more dancepop than anything.

Can you PLEASE for the love of almighty GOD find another word to use other than "lively".

I wonder if part of the problem is that Spotify has made it so easy to inundate yourself with just the genre of music you want, that people are naturally gravitating towards playlist in such proportion that the charts are always filled with slightly shifting proportions of pop, dance & rap. In addition to that, there's a feeling that anything too radical will be rejected because of the nature of streaming. In a sales environment, someone might only partake in the 10% of singles in the chart at the time that particularly struck their fancy, but with streaming, it could be more like the 90% that they tolerate, leaving that 10% being effectively pushed *down* the chart. All of a sudden, oddities that might have risen to the top for standing out, could be punished for doing the same thing.

And if you think the Spotify chart is bad, wait until this December when Ed Snoozeran and Drake release their rap/R&B version of White Christmas!

what's wrong with using the word 'lively' though?

I'd be more than happy for a You Don't Know Me sort of trend, one of the best recent dance songs <3

Clean Bandit aren't exactly making club banger music though, it's mostly uptempo yes but as you say it's more dancepop than anything.