It’s the end of May 1998, and I make our next chart-topper already the fourth this year to involve a reimagining of an older hit. This will be anathema to some – sampling, interpolating, remixing, call it what you will – but for me an inspired sample can be, well, inspired…

Feel It, by The Tamperer ft. Maya (their 1^st and only #1)

1 week, from 24^th – 31^st May 1998

This takes the beat and the bells from The Jacksons’ 1981 disco stomper ‘Can You Feel It’, makes them even more stomping, and uses it as backing to a story of a spurned lover and her desire for house flattening revenge. It’s fair to say that What’s she gonna look like with a chimney on her…? is one of the year’s, if not the decade’s, great hooks. In fact, even just the way that vocalist Maya screams the ‘What!’ is a massive hook in itself.

The Jacksons are not the only sample here, as the two verses come interpolated from the wonderfully titled ‘Wanna Drop a House (On that Bitch)’, by Urban Discharge, released in 1995. What I like most about the lyrics is that they are thoroughly toxic, with the cheated woman forgiving her boyfriend and aiming her ire at the mistress. Well I’m not blaming you, But she’s still hanging round, And she’s so crazy you know man I just don’t trust her…

Nothing about this song, from the opening klaxon onwards, is subtle. The samples are in your face, the lyrics are preposterous, and the bit where everything slows down for no apparent reason is bizarre. But it’s a huge slice of dumb fun. Subtlety be damned. And yes there’s very little originality here, but I will point out that the one original moment is the ‘chimney’ line, and that’s the best bit. (One school of thought I found online is that ‘chimney’ is slang for a black eye… So she’s just going to punch the girl, not blow her house up.)

The Tamperer ft. Maya were an Italian production duo, plus US-born singer Maya Days. (Despite the ‘featuring’ credit, they never released a single which didn’t feature Maya.) This was their first release, and was a hit around Europe that summer. They followed it up with two further Top 10s, both involving bold samples. The brilliantly titled ‘If You Buy This Record (Your Life Will Be Better)’ used ‘Material Girl’, while ‘Hammer to the Heart’ borrowed ABBA’s ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ several years before Madonna did so to much fanfare.

In fact, their chart career ended after those three hits, and aside from a 2009 remix of ‘Feel It’ neither the Tamperer nor Maya have been seen since. And going by the comments underneath the YouTube video below, this is one of the ‘90s more forgotten number ones, with a handful of people around the world waking up each morning asking what that song about the chimney was called. I’d say we’ve had a mini-run of ‘forgotten’ #1s, from Aqua’s best song, to All Saints’ overshadowed covers, to Boyzone’s better-forgotten snoozefest. Up next though, a nineties pop ‘classic’ that, for better or worse, remains very much with us…

(The official video…)

(A better edit of the record…)