I’m going to go ahead and assume that you didn’t watch Olympic ice dancing last weekend.

No disrespect to ice dancing (yet) but it’s not exactly one of the marquee events in the Winter Olympics. Plus, and perhaps more importantly, NBC ran it during the Super Bowl, pretty much guaranteeing that nobody in the United States except maybe the competitors’ families tuned in. They got as close to not airing it all as they possibly could so, you know, it probably escaped your notice.

It definitely would have escaped mine—I didn’t even realize the Winter Olympics had started until two days after the opening ceremony—except for a Wall Street Journal article about the requirement that, for the rhythm dance portion of the competition, each pair of competitors skate to “street dance rhythms.”

I can hear you cringing from here and, while you’re not wrong, you’re probably cringing for the wrong reason. When I saw that phrase I immediately expected a wide variety of unintentional and intentional racism and microaggressions. That did happen, but the really tragic part is what counts as a street dance rhythm to the ice dancing regulatory body. Defector elaborated on the situation and… well, let’s just take a look at five of their selections.

The Commodores — “Brick House”

I bet you’re wondering about all the buildup. Sure, this isn’t exactly a street dance rhythm in the contemporary sense, but there was a point this was relevant to the streets, and it’s performed by people “from the streets” in a coded racism sense, so why did I act like it was such a big deal?

Because I’m going from least to most embarrassing.

If you’re trying to be so bland you won’t offend anyone watching Olympic ice dancing, and you’re doing it in China where the censorship is so severe that the government dictates what rap lyrics can be about, this isn’t the worst choice. I’m not sure if it’s what anyone would think of when given the prompt, but hey, it’s serviceable.

Let’s move on.

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Billie Eilish — “Bad Guy”

Again, it gets worse from here.

Look, this is a good song! Sure, it cursed us with years of insufferable whisper-singing by imitators, but it’s still good. But aside from the fact that it technically does have a rhythm in the sense that nearly every song has a rhythm, I’m not sure how it fits the category. It’s not street, it’s not at all danceable, and it’s absolutely not rhythm-driven. And yet… street dance rhythm.

But hey, at least this is less than 50 years old! That’s surprising uncommon among street dance rhythms!

Elvis Presley — “Blue Suede Shoes”

Sure, a lot of people danced to this song for a long time, so I’ll give them that. But it came out 65 years ago. This song can collect Social Security.

The WSJ speculates that the whole ill-conceived “street dance rhythms” thing was to try to make ice dancing more hip and relevant. Every sport wants to get more popular. But when your attempt to be hip and modern involves a 65-year-old song, and worse that the 65-year-old song in question actually does make the sport more hip and modern than it was previously, means it’s gonna take more than a vaguely racist theme to do the trick.

But at least these three could, to the twisted mind of a national Olympic committee, vaguely fit the theme in a tortured, roundabout way. There are two more songs worse than these.

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Joe Cocker — “You Can Leave Your Hat On”

Street dance rhythms!

Nobody in the history of the human race has ever heard a Joe Cocker song, especially this one, and thought of the word “rhythm,” “dance” or “street.” That’s an objective fact. And yet, this was allowed in a competition that explicitly required street dance rhythms.

I kinda want to find the ice dance to this song, because I’m having trouble imagining how to do any dance to this song, frozen or otherwise. What in the world? It’s a good enough song but, really, what in the world? How does this even come to mind? I’d love to meet the person who saw “street dance rhythms,” thought of this specific song and was confident enough to present it to the group. Then that group listened to the song, though about it, and said to themselves, “Yep, perfect, street dance rhythm, let’s get to the choreography.”

Elton John — “I’m Still Standing”

Famed street artist Sir Elton John, king of the dance rhythms.

Look, I’m a fan of Elton’s music. I wrote a whole column about his six decades of singles on the charts. But if I had to pick one artist I least associate with street dance rhythms, Elton would be in the running along with Enya, Morrissey and Celine Dion. If I had to try to appeal to the youths, I probably wouldn’t pick an Elton song that Dua Lipa wasn’t also involved with. But here we are. Street dance rhythmist Sir Elton John.

You can now resume forgetting that ice dancing exists.

Follow editor Daniel J. Willis and tweet column ideas to him at Twitter.com/BayAreaData.