All this winter, Morning Edition has been creating The Ultimate NPR Workout Mix by asking people what music makes them move. NPR's own Susan Stamberg says her favorite workout method, Jazzercise, is inherently musical.
"Jazzercise is, in my case, a group of women of a certain age — although there are a few young ones in the class — who kind of flounce around to so-called contemporary music," Stamberg says. "It's the only exercise I've ever stuck with, and I've been doing it for something like 20 years."
Since hearing it for the first time in a Jazzercise class, Stamberg says, her favorite song to make her move is The Weather Girls' 1982 hit "It's Raining Men."
"It's got a good beat, it's steady, I can keep up with it, and I like the lyrics," Stamberg says. "There's lots of good energy, and it gets me going at a certain pace."
More than the beat, Stamberg says, it's the words that really get her.
"The thing I love the most about it is one particular lyric in which she sings, 'God bless Mother Nature, she's a single woman, too / She looked up to the heavens, and she knew what to do.' And she makes it begin to rain men," Stamberg says. "The words always interest me more, really, than the melody itself. Those lyrics are very funny and very witty."
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