We’re about to encounter one of the biggest pop songs of all time, from a legendary star. But before that, a brief interlude. A real ‘um, okay’ moment…
Gym and Tonic, by Spacedust (their 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 18th – 25th October 1998
‘Gym and Tonic’ is, essentially, an aerobics workout set to a hi-NRG beat. Stand with your feet parallel, A little more than hip distance apart… Apparently it was based on a Jane Fonda workout from the eighties, with the vocals here re-recorded to avoid a lawsuit. How fun it would have been if Jane had allowed it, and had featured on a number one single!
Although had that been the case, then it would presumably have been the original version by French DJ Bob Sinclar, very popular in Ibiza that summer, that would have been the hit. It was produced by Thomas Bangalter, AKA one half of Daft Punk (Yes, a member of Daft Punk, one of the most respected dance acts of all time, is involved in this nonsense.) Their version was never fully released due to the Fonda sample, but survives on YouTube. I’m not sure even an experienced musicologist could tell the difference between that and the Spacedust version – a few scratchy cuts aside – but they got away with it.
The most interesting thing here, musically, is the Balearic riff that plays over the top of the beat and all the five, six, seven, eight and backs. It sounds like all the dance hits to come between 1999 and the start of the new century. The future of dance music, first revealed in a piece of fluff like this…
Still, you can never underestimate the popularity of a dance song that tells you what to do in the lyrics: ‘The Time Warp’, ‘The Cha-Cha Slide’… This. All big hits. Although ‘Gym and Tonic’ did also strike it lucky by sneaking a week on top with very low sales. It was by far the year’s lowest selling #1, only the 109th biggest selling hit of 1998 (meaning that seventy-nine singles which didn’t make number one outsold it).
Spacedust were a British production duo, and beyond this surprise chart-topper they had one further hit, a #20 with ‘Let’s Get Down’. And I’ll admit I’ve been bopping along to this track for the past half hour, enjoying its infectious energy. It’s silly, but not at all heinous. And the video is a whole lot of camp fun, almost reinventing the phrase ‘cheap and cheerful’. It’s oddities like this which keep writing these posts interesting. It can’t all be era-defining pop classics. Speaking of which…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
I remember the more surreal music videos used to scare me when I was a kid. This probably would have seriously disturbed me, all those manic grins. As for the music, it’s inoffensive enough, but I think I will stick to Macho Man by the Village People for my rare workouts.
OMG. I love the dude in the speedo. LOL!
Haha yes, the video is silly fun : )
Uh…and this was #1? Well if they were going to do a dance track…might as well just push it all of the way.
I do wish that the Jane Fonda version had been released, and she’d featured on a number one.
Yea…I remember her videos because my sister had them.
Doubtless an unpopular opinion due to myself seemingly being mostly underground and not seeming to like much of mass appeal by this stage of the late nineties. I really like Let’s Get Down and have no idea how anyone cannot like it, except perhaps those that don’t like the sampling of Chic’s I Want Your Love. It spent just that one week at number 20 in the Top 40 singles chart, showing it didn’t have mass appeal as it didn’t cross over, effectively a sound from the underground clubs bought by DJs to play in them together with the fans of the song. I remember it being sidelined by radio, only played at weekends including the one play on the Top 40 show, only for it to be dropped and then everywhere continuously play the hopeless Gym and Tonic – 5 6 7 8 and back tacky rubbish to me – that obviously more people like. It was just rubbing it in to play the same artist but a rubbish song instead, on the so-called dance station that had largely ceased being dance music by then – I didn’t even know Gym and Tonic had been a hit or that it had been at number 1, I must have completely switched off the Top 40 chart at that point due to not liking the song and myself clearly clueless as I only knew the much lesser hit.
By 2000, I only know lowest new entries each week and no clue about much songs that got into the Top 10 or stayed in the charts for ages and ages actually selling – except I have since discovered that I like all of them just in versions except the pop versions, remix dance versions of them all! Therefore, if someone does a remix of Spacedust’s Gym and Tonic, to turn them back into dance music over a pop song on which they weren’t dance, I will love it – especially if it changes the vast majority of the song completely. As for these songs supposedly being “inoffensive”, it seems to be “inoffensive” music that offends me the most and is not actually inoffensive therefore. I am out of touch. I will go away now.