There are two kinds of people in this world: people who hear a deep funk bassline drop and go feral, and people I don’t talk to. The second a disco groove gets into the room, something shifts low in my body and I start making bad decisions, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment to the genre. I’ve shown up to clubs in neon-blue eyeshadow and go-go boots at midnight on a Tuesday specifically because I knew it was funk night and I was already in the mood to make someone’s evening significantly more interesting. I’ve abandoned perfectly good situationships mid-conversation because the DJ switched to something with a Nile Rodgers chord and my body had opinions. I have a running list of venues that will still let me in the door, and every single one of them plays disco. Funk and disco are the only genres that have ever made me feel available, obvious about it, and completely fucking thrilled with both, and whatever happens next is nobody’s problem but mine. Audren’s ‘We Want Funkey!’ hits like white lines on a glass table at a discotheque at 1am, and I mean that as a five-star review.
The production is warm and so loose it should probably require a conversation first. There’s a bassline that starts at the floor and ends somewhere between your thighs, doing something so specific you’re going to want to find someone to finish what it started. Brass stabs. Audren’s voice riding the top of the groove with the confidence of someone who has been here before and came back on purpose. The whole damn track just rolls and you go with it because stopping is not a choice anyone in this room is seriously entertaining.
She opens the dance with a direct offer: “For you I think I’m going to try / I think I’m going to fly / I think I’m going to dance for you.” Dancing for someone is foreplay with better lighting. You both know how it ends and you’re both going to pretend you don’t for at least another forty minutes because the anticipation is half the pleasure and Audren knows it.
Advertisement
Then she shifts to the collective and the mood gets deliciously selfish: “We say we’re fed up / Today’s a roll up / We want fun.” Done with the bad week. Done performing responsibility for an audience that doesn’t deserve the show. We’re rolling up to the floor, to the night, to whatever the hell this becomes. We want fun is a declaration of war against every obligation that had the nerve to exist this week.
The track keeps rolling and she gets specific about what she’s leaving behind. “We don’t need that blues / We don’t need bad news.” She’s telling the whole miserable pile of it to clear a path because she has a floor to get to. I showed up two weeks ago with an unread voicemail from my landlord and a half-finished argument in my drafts and put this on for the walk in and arrived having forgotten both of those things existed. So yes. This shit works.
The groove builds and Audren gets gloriously direct: “Raise your hands to the sky / Move your booty / You should try / Don’t be shy.” She wants your ass in motion and she says so out loud. She wants you warm and wet and so deep in this groove that you’ve stopped keeping track of anything happening outside the floor. “Don’t be shy” is a little bit of a joke by this point because the shyness dissolved two songs ago and we’re having a shit-ton of fun and nobody is going home when they planned to.
Then she drops the line that’s been living in my head since first listen. “We’ve been round and round the world and let me tell you, we just love it this way.” Women who’ve been everywhere and still choose THIS. The floor at midnight, bass at a fucking volume that makes thinking optional. Knowing what you want and going to get it. Full stop.
Then she calls the girls in: “Come on girls / Say we’re better / He’s a winner / Let me show you the dance.” That’s a transfer of knowledge happening in real time. Teaching the dance means teaching how to own the room, how to move with the kind of deliberate confidence that makes someone across the floor rethink his entire evening. That’s the moment you’ve picked your target and your body has already started negotiating the terms of what comes after last call. The kind of invitation that ends with everyone doing something they are going to feel great about in the morning.
Advertisement
Then she strips it all the way down. “Let me dance to the music” is the moment where nothing else matters. No strategy. The body doing what it wants and the music giving it permission. The rest writes itself.
Audren is a French artist, bestselling author, and self-described good witch, and honestly that last part explains everything you need to know about why her music feels like it was made to seduce you. She had a whole career going, got knocked flat by Lyme disease, lost her ability to sing, and instead of falling apart she became a bestselling author because she is built different and apparently does not know how to fucking quit. She fought her way back to music, made an album with her partner and their two daughters, and called it Think Freedom, which is the kind of move you make when you’ve earned the right to say whatever the fuck you want.
I’ll be at that Tuesday funk night again, in the boots and the eyeshadow, with considerably worse intentions than last time. Audren’s ‘We Want Funkey!’ is going to be the reason I’m still on the floor at 3am when everyone else went home to make responsible choices, and I am absolutely not sorry about a single fucking thing that happens between now and then.
