We were at the ZooLights exhibit at Woodland Park Zoo on Saturday, and they had an “interactive exhibit” for children. This included transparent, light-up see-saws, a machine that emits smoke-filled bubbles, and a small dance floor with panels that changed color as you stepped on them. As my young one was cutting a rug, I thought up the frankly ridiculous lyrics and melody that became today’s song. I imagine the full thing being in the style of one of those “Trashy Disco-Punk” songs like Fall Out Boy included on their first few albums (before Save Rock and Roll, where those tunes slowly started becoming the rule rather than the exception) like “Dance, Dance” from Cork Tree or “This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race” from Infinity on High. I also came up with a little fragment of a verse that had a reference to Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?  but I forgot this by the time I thought to turn the silly idea in my head into an actual candidate for Jamuary. It’s floating around above the zoo grounds, intermixed with the smoke from all those bubbles.

When we got home, I recorded a more isolated version on my phone while supine on the couch, which is what we have here. Since I was pretty tired at this point, I just did everything on my phone, including the MP3 encoding, artwork selection, and MP3 tagging.

Lyrics

I’m a machine on the dance floor

I’m a machine — what are you waiting for?

If you thought that you danced nice

Better stop and then think twice

I’m a machine on the dance floor