About

A house music chart from the DJ booth

Jack Your Body is a monthly chart for new house music, built from what DJs actually play and recommend. No sales figures, no paid placements, no algorithmic playlists. Just the records that keep turning up in the bags of DJs who play the clubs, festivals and radio shows that shape underground house today.

We all love lists

Let's be honest: we all love lists. Top tens, best-ofs, year-end polls, mixtapes passed on between friends and the playlists we build for every mood. A good list is a small act of trust. Someone you rate tells you what matters right now, and you get to dig in.

Back in the days of print, the DJ charts were the most read pages of any music magazine. Long before social media, they were often the only way to find out what the DJs you admired were actually playing. Ten records, a name and maybe a short comment, and you would carry that page to the record shop. The DJs were the gatekeepers, and their charts were the map.

Lists are still everywhere today, more than ever. But many of them have lost their innocence. Charts are filled with the DJ's own releases and their label's catalogue, store charts are driven by marketing budgets, and streaming playlists are shaped by pitching and algorithms. It has become hard to tell what someone really plays from what someone wants to sell.

Jack Your Body is an attempt to get back to what made those magazine pages special: real records, picked by people who play them in front of a dancefloor. Not one gatekeeper, but hundreds of them at once, and with the promo filtered out as well as we can.

Why another house music chart?

Most house music charts are sales charts. They show what sold best in a store this week, and that is mostly decided by promotion budgets, big labels and whatever the store puts on its front page. Underground house works differently. A record becomes important because DJs play it, night after night, on the radio and in clubs, long before it shows up anywhere near a bestseller list. Some of the best records never do.

Jack Your Body tries to capture that moment. It follows the DJs instead of the stores and asks a simple question every month: which new records are DJs reaching for again and again?

Where the data comes from

Radio shows and DJ mixes

Every month we read the tracklists of around 170 house, deep house and disco radio shows from NTS, played by close to 90 different DJs and selectors. That is roughly 3,000 tracks per month. Shows that cover Chicago house, Detroit, leftfield house, balearic, boogie and classic disco are all part of it.

DJ charts

The second source are the charts DJs publish themselves: the monthly DJ charts on Juno Records and DJ charts on Beatport from artists who play the clubs we follow. These charts are a strong signal, because a DJ puts their own name on them. Charts from record shops, labels promoting their own catalogue or shop staff picks are not counted as DJ charts.

Who counts as a DJ here

To keep the chart close to the underground, we built a list of the people who actually play the rooms that matter. We started with a handful of trusted DJs and followed where they play: Panorama Bar in Berlin, Robert Johnson in Offenbach, Nowadays in New York, fabric, FOLD, Phonox and The Cause in London, Sub Club in Glasgow, The White Hotel in Manchester, Lofi, Shelter and Radio Radio in Amsterdam, essaim and FVTVR in Paris, Nitsa in Barcelona, Lux Frágil in Lisbon, Bassiani in Tbilisi, BLITZ in Munich, TRAUM in Antwerp, plus festivals such as Dekmantel, The Garden Tisno, Houghton and Dekmantel Selectors. Closer to home, Gewölbe and fi in Cologne and Open Ground in Wuppertal are part of the map.

Every DJ who played at least five of these 37 places in the past year becomes part of the list. Right now that is 467 DJs, from long-standing names to people who only started playing these rooms recently. The list is rebuilt regularly, so new names come in on their own.

How the chart works

The rules are simple and the same every month.

• One DJ, one vote. Every DJ who plays a record on the radio or puts it in their monthly chart gives it ten points. A DJ who plays the same record in three shows still counts once.
• At least two DJs. A record only enters the chart when at least two different DJs played or charted it. One enthusiastic fan is not enough.
• Club DJs weigh more. If a DJ from our list of club and festival DJs backs a record, it gets five extra points.
• Played and charted. A DJ who plays a record and also puts it in their chart is clearly serious about it. That earns another five points.
• No self-promotion. DJs playing their own records do not count, and neither do charts full of the DJ's own label.
• New records only. The Top 20 is for releases from the last twelve months. Release years are checked against Discogs, so a reissue of a 1992 record counts as a 1992 record.

Points are only there to sort the list. What matters is who played a record, and that is shown next to every entry.

Still in the bag

DJs do not only play new records. Classics by Larry Heard, Ron Trent, Blaze or Dream 2 Science come back every month, and some disco and boogie records never leave the bag at all. They do not belong in a chart of new music, but they deserve a place. That is what the Still in the bag corner is for: older records that several DJs played this month.

What kind of house music

House is house. Deep house, Chicago house, New York garage, soulful house, jackin house, leftfield house, disco, nu disco, boogie and edits all share the same list. What we leave out are styles that live in a different world: afro house, tech house, melodic house and techno, progressive and big room. Techno only shows up when it is played by house DJs as part of a house set.

Track IDs, previews and where to buy

Every entry shows artist, title and the DJs and shows that played it, so you finally have the track ID of that record you heard on the radio. Where we can find it, you can preview the record directly on the page through Spotify, Bandcamp or YouTube. These players only load after you press play and agree, see the privacy policy.

Each record links to Bandcamp, Discogs and Juno. Many of these releases come out on vinyl only or in small runs on small labels. If you like a record, buy it, ideally straight from the artist or the label.

Updated every month

The chart is updated at the start of every month and covers the previous four to five weeks of radio shows and DJ charts. Older months will be collected in an archive, so you can follow how records rise, stay and disappear.

Who is behind it

Jack Your Body is a non-commercial side project by Radical Index, run by a former music journalist who spent many years writing about house and disco and still buys too many records. There are no ads, no affiliate links and no tracking. The name is a nod to Steve "Silk" Hurley's 1986 Chicago classic. Farley "Jackmaster" Funk's "Love Can't Turn Around" had already carried house from the Chicago clubs into the UK charts in the summer of 1986, and in January 1987 "Jack Your Body" became the first house record to reach number one there.

Questions

Is this a sales chart?

No. Sales play no role at all. A record gets into the chart because DJs play it or recommend it.

Why is my favourite track not in the chart?

Either it was not played by at least two DJs in our sources this month, it is older than twelve months, or it is in a style we leave out. It may well show up next month.

Can I submit my record or my chart?

Not directly. The chart only works because nobody can buy or send their way in. If DJs play your record, it will find its way here.

Which sources do you use?

Tracklists of house and disco shows on NTS Radio, DJ charts on Juno Records and Beatport, and release data from Discogs. We plan to add more radio stations over time.