Dance music that gets feet and emotions moving

In honor of Robin Gibb, Chuck Brown and  Donna Summer, we list five heavy-hearted dance tunes.

Getting on the good foot got a little harder last week with the deaths of three important dance-music stars: disco queen Donna Summer, go-go godfather Chuck Brown and Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees. Each leaves behind a legacy of exuberance, even as their passing demands a moment of reflection. In that spirit, here are five heavy-hearted dance tunes.

Junior Boys, "Birthday"

"You've gone and then you missed my birthday," Jeremy Greenspan mumbles in this typically forlorn (but icily beautiful) number by his Canadian electro-pop duo. For Junior Boys, the dance floor is just one more place to be alone.

Robyn, "Dancing on My Own"

That sentiment reaches full miserable flower here, with Robyn eyeing her crush across the room as he cuts the rug with another. "I'm right over here," she implores over an increasingly desperate groove, "Why can't you see me?"

ABBA, "The Winner Takes It All"

The Swedish popmeisters' early-'80s tear-jerker starts out small, narrating the demise of a relationship. By the end, though, Agnetha Fältskog is lamenting injustice on a grand scale: "The judges will decide / The likes of me abide."

Michael Jackson, "She's Out of My Life"

This ballad from Jackson's disco-era "Off the Wall" contains what might be the most vulnerable vocal performance in his catalog. Beware the voice crack in the outro -- it's a killer.

Pet Shop Boys, "Beautiful People"

Given a lush orchestral sweep by the brilliant U.K. production team Xenomania, the Pet Shop Boys' 2009 single sounds like a dream. But its lyric -- about the lie of consumer-culture perfection -- turns the music melancholy.

RELATED:

Donna Summer dies at 63; diva of disco

Biggie Smalls would have turned 40 today

Robin Gibb: A Bee Gees voice filled with more than just disco

Chuck Brown dies: King of D.C. go-go music, influential sample source

-- Mikael Wood

Photos: Robin Gibb, Chuck Brown and Donna Summer. (Credits: Gibb - Patrick Kovarik / AFP/Getty Images; Brown - Jason Moore / Zuma Press/MCT; Summer - Jeff Christensen / Reuters)

From Run-DMC to U2, the durability of the Monkees & Davy Jones

Television was the priority, but the Monkees still made a lasting impression on pop music. The band's string of hits between 1966 and 1968 may have initially cashed in on Beatlemania, but the songs have long transcended novelty status, no doubt due in part to the fact that the Monkees' albums drew from expert pop craftsmen such as Carole King, Neil Diamond and the songwriting duo of Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

With the news today that Monkees frontman Davy Jones had died, Pop & Hiss takes a look at the band's enduring influence on the generations that followed.

"The Monkees," a TV series heavily influenced by the whimsical nature of the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night," first aired in September 1966, and the music from those shows soon crossed over to the pop charts. The members of the Monkees long fought to correct the perception that they were little more than puppets, though their first few singles featured little more than the group's voices over other artists'  songs and instrumentation. Those early hits included the Boyce & Hart cut "Last Train to Clarksville" and Diamond's "I'm a Believer." 

The Monkees, which also featured Peter Tork, Michael Nesmith (who was considered the serious musician of the group) and Micky Dolenz, saw its show declining in popularity by early 1968. Yet during that  short run, the Monkees had toured with Jimi Hendrix and put one of the first-ever uses of the Moog synthesizer on record with the song “Daily Nightly.” 

PHOTOS: Davy Jones: Dec, 30, 1945-Feb. 29, 2012

Jones was primarily an actor until his Monkees role as frontman turned him into a teen idol. As the face of the group, Jones led the evolution of the Monkees from a TV show creation to a notable part of '60s pop culture. Below, a look at some of the artists, including Run-DMC and the Sex Pistols, who tackled songs made famous by the Monkees.