Is 1995 the year with the biggest disparity between what it is remembered for, and what actually made #1? 1977 might have a case, the year punk exploded yet in which David Soul was the breakthrough star. 1995, though…?
Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle), by The Outhere Brothers (their 1st of two #1s)
1 week, from 26th March – 2nd April 1995
I mention this because this next number one has left me in a state of shock. Shock at how I don’t really remember it. Shock at some of the lyrics. And shock at just how bloody awful it is… Biiiyyaaatch!
I thought that Rednex had my upcoming ‘Worst #1 Award’ in the bag. But as horrible as ‘Cotton Eye Joe’ is, at least it is identifiable as a ‘song’. This is an absolute racket. The pitch of the singer’s voice as he repeats the title line: Don’t stop movin’ baby oh that booty drive me crazy…, the one-note beat and the bubble-popping sound effect, the way that that one line is chopped up over and over again, ad nauseum… Some mixes are better than others – and the video attached at the foot of this post is the most palatable version, with a Hi-NRG beat – but most are dire.
I’m torn between wrapping this post up as soon as possible, trying to forget that this record ever existed, and delving a bit deeper. The radio edit of ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ is repetitively, mind-numbingly, boring. But that wasn’t the reason this made number one. For the other, non-edited mixes reveal this to be the filthiest number one single we’ve heard so far on this countdown.
No, make that one of the filthiest number ones, ever. Period. Even in this post-‘WAP’ world, the lyrics here still raise an eyebrow. There’s that opening Biiiyyaaatch! for a start. Then there’s: Put your ass on my face… I love the way your… No I can’t type the rest. Girl you’ve got to suck my… Nope, still can’t. I’m not a prude, but this isn’t something I’ve never had to consider in my seven hundred and seventeen previous posts. The worst word we’ve encountered so far has been, I think, ‘bullshit’. And that’s a word I heard on Radio 4 the other day… I knew the 1990s would see morals and standards loosen (God, I sound like Mary Whitehouse), but I though it would be gradual. A ‘bitch’ here and a ‘fuck’ there. But no, it all arrived at once, right here: a smorgasbord of vulgarity. Which means that ‘Don’t Stop (Wiggle Wiggle)’ is actually a hugely important chart-topper…
But nah, I don’t want to give it that sort of weight. It happened. Swearing in #1 singles is fine now. Let’s move on. (And anyway, luckily for all of us, The Outhere Brothers have an even bigger hit coming up very soon…) They were a duo from Chicago – yet another pair of fake chart-topping siblings – and this was their breakthrough hit, after previous releases such as ‘Pass the Toilet Paper’ had failed to chart. Thirteen-year-old boys around the world then kept the pair in hits for the next couple of years, though their subsequent album ‘1 Polish, 2 Biscuits and a Fish Sandwich’ wasn’t as successful (and you can look up the meaning of that title, if you dare…)
Back to what I mentioned in the intro, about 1995 being a strange year, in which most of the acts and songs we remember the year for didn’t make the top of the charts. It’s a theme I’ll return to, especially when a different gruesome twosome dominate later in the year. Up next, though, I’m sort of instantly proven wrong, for it’s the decade’s biggest boyband, with one of the nation’s best-loved songs…
(The ‘best’ version of the song…)
(The explicit version, if you must…)
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Oh dear… it was around this time that I took the long-considered decision to stop doing my mobile DJ’ing on a regular basis. After that it was just the occasional silver wedding party or 1960s oldies summer season, using borrowed sound and light gear (my own vinyl though), and that kind of thing for the next few years. No current chart stuff, as I was playing for a different – OK, older – audience. It was records like this that helped me never to regret knocking it on the head.
Was there a record in particular that tipped you over the edge, and convinced you to stop? Or was it just gradual?
It was gradual. I’d been a mobile DJ for about eight years, and before that had residencies in a couple of places going back to the late 70s. By the early 90s, I realised that I didn’t like most of the current Top 40, and the money I was making out of it wasn’t sufficient compensation for what was no longer really fun any more. We all turn into dinosaurs in the end!
Although I’ve stopped DJ’ing, I’m still writing about music – acts I enjoy. I also organise weekly live music sessions at the local pub, sing and play various instruments, and formed a band with several of the regulars. We played our first gig a few days ago. I also set questions for and host a regular music quiz at thew same place, so I’m still involved – just in a different way.
That all sounds great! Congrats on the new band, too. I think we all get too old for the charts in the end – they are supposed to be for the youngsters after all. I’m in my late thirties, and already a bit too old to be interested in chart music (if I compare myself to others my age…)
I don’t really hate this – it’s not good but I don’t think it’s awful – but I legit thought this would be a gangsta rap song since the artists in that picture are dressed up like 90s gangster rappers and I was getting excited to hear some gangsta rap – which I think is coming soon at No. 1 with Coolio – and then I hear Eurodance techno beats. Ah well. You win some, you lose some.
Yes, Coolio is coming up soon. This is gangsta rap as imagined by a twelve-year old, with lyrics to match the adolescent mindset…
Yea this is bad man…you could put that dance beat with you and I yelling things….and it wouldn’t be much different.
If I can use their inspiration for my assessment? It’s bollocks. Always hated it. Nothing wrong with swearing when it’s used for a point, like underlining a sentence or using BOLD, but when it’s just to deliberately try and appeal to 13 year olds it just demonstrates a lack of class, ability. OK, I swear in real life, but that doesn’t mean I need to hear it used in a song lyric just because loads of rich stars get rich doing it and then hypocritically pushing a radio version out. If your “art” demands you need an F word, then all you do is show you’re doing it for money if you fade it or replace it. I use as my template the rather fabulous radio-unfriendly Two Fux by Adam Lambert. Had a point. Great record. Title not edited out. Not a hit. Most songs using the F word would be better without it, so it’s superfluous. Bit like this record… 🙂
Swearing every second word is as unappealing in spoken English as it is sung/rapped English, and I can swear with the best of them.
My problem with this is not so much the swearing, its how unfunny it is. Especially when it comes to sex, you can make a very funny, very explicit song… (WAP comes to mind) But this is just dumb, and nobody over the age of thirteen should be finding this amusing.