A planned trip to Paris that ends up in Italy is an annoying thing to have happen. It’s also what gave pianist Michael Dulin his latest single. The plan had been dinner, drinks, and a midnight dance under the Eiffel Tower, and when the detour came, Dulin wrote the evening as a tune instead. “Dancing in Paris” came out on September 18th from the Birmingham, Alabama musician.
According to the press materials, the song is a mid-tempo swing waltz, with brushed drums and a lilting 3/4 pulse underneath a melody that sits somewhere between wistful and playful. That fits the backstory, since the whole thing started as a small disappointment handled with a sense of humor. A waltz is also a smart choice of form for a song about a dance that never happened. It has a built-in sense of motion, and a bit of nostalgia comes along with it.
Dulin’s background explains the polish you’d expect. He trained as a classical pianist, studied at Juilliard, and, by his bio, has also toured as keyboardist for The Temptations. He runs his own Equity Digital label out of Birmingham, and his 2008 album “Follow the River” was where jazz elements first started working their way into his sound. The kit points to Jeff Lorber, Brian Culbertson, Chick Corea and Dave Grusin as reference points, which puts “Dancing in Paris” on the smoother, more melodic side of piano jazz rather than anything experimental.
The single is pitched at late-night jazz and romantic dinner playlists, and a music video was scheduled to follow on September 25th. Dulin has been putting out instrumental singles steadily for a couple of years now, five of them in 2024 alone, and this one slots into that run as another small, clearly framed idea. For anyone building a playlist around candlelit dinners or slow evenings in, “Dancing in Paris” is aimed squarely at that moment, and the story behind it gives it a bit more personality than a generic mood piece would have.