Music Box Dancer

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"Music Box Dancer" is an instrumental by Frank Mills that was an international hit in the late 1970s. It features a piano theme that is accompanied by other instrumentation.

"Music Box Dancer" was written and recorded by Frank Mills in 1974, but it was not to become a single until 1978^[1]. By Christmas of that year, it was in the top ten of many pop music charts throughout Europe and Asia. Released as a single in the United States late in 1978, it reached Number 3 on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart in April 1979^[2].

To date, numerous different versions of "Music Box Dancer" have been produced. It has been recorded by such well-known pianists as Floyd Cramer, Roger Williams and Eric Robertson, and by orchestral artists such as James Last and 101 Strings. Bandleader Ray Conniff added lyrics and titled the song "Little Music Box Dancer" for his album I Will Survive in 1979. A calypso version was recorded by Germany's Roberto Delgado, while in Sweden, an accordion version was released. The band PePe even produced a techno version. This famous tune has even been whistled on one recording and sung in Japanese on another.

"Music Box Dancer" was one of the biggest instrumental pop music hits in the mid to late 20th century. By the late 1970s very few instrumental songs became pop music hits, and at the time many of the other instrumentals on the charts were disco-oriented, which "Music Box Dancer" was not.

The song is still heard in Canada, Mexico and the USA in a simplified form as the tune of certain ice cream trucks. A scene in the film Kill Bill features a truck playing this very song. On their live DVD "Wiggle Dancing" the Wiggles dance to the song.