I'm So Excited by The Pointer Sisters

I'm So Excited is a dance-pop song by the Pointer Sisters, written by Anita, June and Ruth Pointer with Trevor Lawrence and produced by Richard Perry. It first came out in September 1982 as a single from the album So Excited! and peaked at number 30 on the Billboard Hot 100. A remixed version, added to the album Break Out and released again as a single in July 1984, reached number 9 and became one of the group's best known records.

The song came together while the sisters were working on So Excited! in 1982. Lawrence, a saxophonist who held an associate producer credit on the record, wrote it with the three sisters and also played tenor sax on the track. Anita Pointer sang lead, with Ruth and June on backing vocals. Perry kept the arrangement bright and fast. The lyric is a romantic one about a night the singer has been looking forward to with someone special.

The studio band was made up of Los Angeles session players. John Barnes played acoustic piano, Greg Phillinganes handled synthesizers, and Michael Boddicker did the synthesizer programming. William Smitty Smith added organ, George Doering and Lee Ritenour played guitar, Nathan Watts played bass, and John J.R. Robinson was on drums. Paulinho da Costa covered percussion, and a horn section of Chuck Findley on trumpet, Richard Hyde on trombone and Jim Horn on saxophone filled out the sound.

In the US the first release reached number 30 on the Hot 100, number 28 on the dance club chart and number 46 on the R&B chart. It did better abroad, climbing to number 9 in Australia and number 4 in Sweden. The sisters were unhappy with how the song did at home and pushed for a second release.

The group released the album Break Out in 1983. Later pressings of the album added a slightly remixed and edited version of I'm So Excited, and RCA and Planet put it out as a single again in July 1984. By then Break Out was turning into the biggest album of the Pointer Sisters' career. It produced four US top 10 hits and went multi-Platinum. The new version of I'm So Excited reached number 9 on the Hot 100, number 10 on the Cash Box chart and number 25 on the Adult Contemporary chart.

Outside the US, the 1984 release peaked at number 11 in the UK and number 6 in Ireland, and it reached the top 30 in Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium and New Zealand. Over the years the song has been certified Platinum in the UK, Denmark, New Zealand and Spain, and Gold in Germany. Its tempo and key are listed on the Song IQ page for I'm So Excited for anyone who wants to play along or mix it.

The music video was directed by Kenny Ortega, the choreographer who later worked on Dirty Dancing, and it was his first music video. It follows the three sisters as they get ready for a formal party at an upscale club. Anita does her makeup and gets dressed, Ruth tosses clothes around her bed, and June soaks in a bubble bath. Once they reach the club, other guests take their photos, and before long everyone in the room is dancing. Actor Dorian Harewood also appears in it.

The original version played in Summer Lovers in 1982 and in National Lampoon's Vacation the next year. It was later heard in Working Girl, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Hot Shots! Part Deux, The Nutty Professor and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. On television it appeared in Miami Vice and Knight Rider in 1984, and later in Saved by the Bell in the episode Jessie's Song. Courteney Cox's Monica sang it on Friends, and it has shown up in The Big Bang Theory, New Girl, Grey's Anatomy and Glee. In the UK, Cadbury used it to sell Crunchie bars in an ad campaign that began in 1991 and ran until 2008.

Other artists have picked it up as well. Croatian singer Nina Badrić recorded a version in 1998 that went to number 1 in Croatia, and a dance remix of her take reached number 4 in Italy. In 2001 Sara-Marie Fedele and Sirens released I'm So Excited (The Bum Dance) in Australia, which reached number 12 on the ARIA chart. The electro-punk band Le Tigre covered it on their 2004 album This Island, and Billy Crystal sampled it on his 1985 comedy single You Look Marvelous.

In 2001 the RIAA and the National Endowment for the Arts ranked it 264th on their Songs of the Century list, and Billboard later placed it at number 23 on its list of the 100 greatest girl group songs of all time. A re-recorded version was included in the video game Just Dance 3 in 2011, and wrestling fans heard it as the opening theme of an AEW Dynamite special in January 2025. In May 2026 the hosts of the Eurovision Song Contest in Vienna performed it live on the broadcast.

The song has passed 370 million streams on Spotify.