Elementary - Love this music

Just to add a bit in English, as this is an Elementary lesson...;) Here we have to figure out subject/verb agreement, which can be really tricky in Spanish! In the sentence "Sus canciones me dan ganas de bailar," the verb is dar and the subject is the plural "sus canciones." As a result, dar should be conjugated in the third person plural form, that is, "dan." If we have a singular subject, such as "la música," the verb would have to be in the third person singular, "da."

Whether to use "dar la gana" or "dar las ganas"...there I can't speak with much grammatical authority, but the fact remains that, in this case, ganas is an object, not a subject, so it can't change the verb conjugation.

In the final sentence you wrote, "De la nada me surgen las ganas de bailar," which, of course, is perfectly correct and demonstrates another weird thing about ganas...they can give themselves, as it were.

For example, someone might ask,

¿Fuiste al cine anoche? to which one might reply,

No. No se me dio la gana, OR No se me dieron las ganas.

In this case, you're absolutely right, whether you decide to use gana or ganas determines how to conjugate the verb.

I understand both of your points of view. They both make sense.

It's one of the weird things about gana/ganas. In this case jeniel said "it always makes me want to dance". This is the same example that yenny did.

So here she wasn't talking about "sus canciones" but rather, "it" in general. Maybe his music, or that album or hearing his songs.

Whenever I hear his songs, it makes me want to dance.

This is very common and where las ganas give themselves, just like you said jen. And sometimes reflexively and sometimes not, which I also find kind of weird.

Once at work a friend of mine ran into the bathroom and then came running out just as fast and yelled to me..."se me quitaron las ganas"!!

Hypersport,

I think you got it right the first time. In the sentence...

"Siempre me dan ganas de bailar."

... the grammatical subject of 'dan' is, indeed, 'ganas'. Here the verb 'dar' is intransitive and means something like 'to enter': "Always the desires enter me to dance. " This is ridiculous in English so we say: "I always feel like dancing."

This is just like 'gustar': Me gusta esta canción/Me gustan estas canciones. (This song is pleasing to me/These songs are pleasing to me.)

The same thing happens with 'faltar' in the sentence: Ganas no me faltan (The desires aren't absent in me, ie It's not like I don't want to)

Because in the original sentence, the grammatical subject is 'ganas', I think it's unlikely that you would say:

"Siempre me da ganas de bailar."

... although perhaps you might say:

"Siempre me da la gana de bailar."

Now if you change the original sentence to...

"Sus canciones me dan ganas de bailar."

... you are talking about something else entirely. In that case, you have a straightforward Subject+ind.obj+verb+dir.obj. But that's a different story entirely.

Yeah Anna8, that was how I saw it originally too.

You did a much better job of explaining it though ;) Gracias.

De nada, hypersport, pero en realidad, tú lo explicaste muy bien. Es sólo que yo no sé callarme :)

¡Qué gracioso lo que dices! Ja ja ja...

Esa cación es fantástica a mi también me gusta.Es muy pegajosa.