BBC Radio 2 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Light Programme.

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Stuart Maconie tells the story of modern Britain via the songs that provided a soundtrack.

Featuring memories contributed by Radio 2 listeners, Stuart Maconie narrates the story of post-war Britain via 50 records that soundtracked this dramatic and kaleidoscopic period.

The People's Songs: You Should Be Dancing - Living for the Weekend

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You Should Be Dancing (1976) – Living For The Weekend

23/10/2013

You Should Be Dancing - Living for the Weekend

BBC Radio 2 - The People's Songs, You Should Be Dancing - Living for the Weekend

Stuart looks at our desire to welcome in the weekend.

You Should Be Dancing is the simple, self-explanatory call to action that sums up generation after generation of British kids post-World War II. Although the Bee Gees' song is from the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, a movie that's set in Brooklyn, the theme is universal; the desire, the need to escape from a demeaning and demoralising job through hedonism and pleasure come the weekend. In fact the film's original title was Tribal Rites On A Saturday Night, which was more unwieldy but nails the essence of the film. Napoleon might have thought we were a nation of shopkeepers, but for many Brits we're a nation of weekend warriors: hearty hedonists who work hard but party harder come five o'clock on a Friday night. Whether it's Bognor or Bradford, Belfast or Brechin, at the weekend there are thousands of venues and millions of people ecstatically enjoying their 48 hours of freedom.
Saturday Night Fever is one of the best-selling albums of all time, an unstoppable juggernaut which has sold something like 25 million copies, and which epitomised the urban nightlife of the late 1970s; all flowing locks and flared suits, medallions and mirror balls. Friday night and the weekend had also been portrayed in other films like Human Traffic, which brilliantly evokes the British rave scene of the late Nineties.

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