200 Greatest Dance Songs of All Time

Dominatrix, ‘The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight’ (1983) – #119

In 1982, Stuart Argabright, a downtown New York musician who’d been in a number of a few arty bands, received a Korg MS-20 synthesizer “as part of an exchange with a Dominatrix friend,” he said years later. That synth featured prominently on a song that same friend inspired, “The Dominatrix Sleeps Tonight,” credited to Dominatrix — Claudia Summers did the plainspoken vocals. The song blanketed New York clubs in 1984 and has had a healthy afterlife; though the video, directed by artist Beth B., seems tame today, it was too outré for MTV — but not for the Museum of Modern Art, which added the clip to its video collection. —M.M.

Source: Rolling Stone