And now for something slightly different…
Flat Beat, by Mr. Oizo (his 1st and only #1)
2 weeks, from 28th March – 11th April 1999
…please don’t adjust your dial. I did earlier bill 1999 as the year of the random dance hit, and dance hits don’t come much more random than this.
Yes, it’s repetitive, but when the song is called ‘Flat Beat’ I think that’s largely the point. And yes, some of the myriad effects, pulses and throbs that make up this record are odd. But there’s something hypnotising in this track’s minimalism, and in that strange, vibrating bass riff that you can almost feel pressing against your eardrums (this is a chart-topper best appreciated through headphones).
Every thirty seconds or so, as you begin to tire of the simple beat, another little element is added, just in time. I’m imagining Mr. Oizo taking a walk through his local rainforest, and using some of the stranger sounding animal calls to decorate this tune. The intro features a woman claiming that Quentin (Mr. Oizo’s real name) is a ‘real jerkie’. The album version ends on what sounds a lot like someone taking a piss. I can’t say I truly love ‘Flat Beat’, but I do enjoy how bloody weird it is.
‘Flat Beat’ was helped to the top of the charts by Flat Eric, a yellow puppet made by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop. In the video he runs a business, answering phones and smoking frankfurters. But it was his appearance in a series of Levi’s adverts that made him famous, and that necessitated Mr. Oizo make a tune to go with them.
This is the latest – the seventh – and I believe final ‘Levi’s’ chart-topper. Since the mid-eighties we’ve had the jeans makers to thank for curios like ‘The Joker’, ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’, and Stiltskin’s ‘Inside’ making number one. Like its predecessors, ‘Flat Beat’ would have been nowhere near #1 without the ad campaign, but I will say that all of the Levi’s-resurrected chart-toppers have been worthwhile in their own way.
Mr. Oizo AKA Quentin Dupieux is a French DJ and filmmaker (‘oiseau’ being French for ‘bird’). ‘Flat Beat’ was a bonus track on his first album, and he’s had a few others which have been minor hits in his homeland. In the UK he has gold-star, purest one-hit wonder status, with nothing else even grazing the lower reaches of the charts.
It’s also worth noticing that, spoken intro aside, this is a purely instrumental track. Wikipedia lists it as the 25th instrumental number one, though they count ‘Hoots Mon’, and ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ in that list, which seems generous. What’s indisputable is that there have been precious few since the genre’s heyday in the fifties and early-sixties – this is only the ‘90s second instrumental after ‘Doop’, while there were zero in the ‘80s – and that there are precious few more to come.
The album version:
The UK Number Ones Blog 
OK, oh dear, showing my age maybe, but I really felt at the time this was the ultimate non-record to get to No. 1, a sheer example of sound or noise for its own sake. A few seconds of it quarter of a century later and I haven’t changed my mind. I think I’d rather listen to even ’No Charge’ than this again.
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Not sure it’s (entirely) an age thing. I can completely understand hearing this and wondering what in God’s name the world is coming to… It’s very of its time, but I do find it interesting at least. ‘No Charge’s place as the worst #1 ever is safe, for now…
Plus, pressing buttons and making funny noises, even if just for the sake of it, beats the sound of a certain Irish boyband whose reign of terror starts very soon…
Never heard this before, has a certain charm.
Gimmicky trash. Awful. 0/10.
You guys….had some strange ass number 1’s lol. I’m not saying all were bad…but strange. America did in the 70s but wow.
Yeah this one is bizarre…
it seems to still be pretty popular with the generation that bought it, but I hated it and still do. It’s what I call “lazy” music – tracks that drop a groove and dont stray far from it, adding nothing of interest, musically or lyrically, along the way. My rule of thumb is “if nothing interesting has happened inside 1 minute 30 seconds I will move on to something that does”. As I pointed out to some fans of long-form music that one can make a perfect record inside 2 minutes that takes you on a real exciting musical journey there is no such thing as “too short”. I nominate Corinne Bailey Rae’s single off her recent Mercury award-nominated album as proof: New York Transit Queen is perfect from start to end. 2 minutes done. Flat Beat should have been, ooh, about 40 seconds long for optimum effect. Or an advert-length……
I do love New York Transit Queen, but could argue that it is nearly as repetitive as Flat Beat… Just in a completely different genre. It is much shorter though, I’ll give you that.
I agree NYTQ is repetitive in the core chant and the clapping, but that’s just a part of the 2 minutes that provides the backbone: the punk attitude, the riffs, and the variations in lyrics and instrumental segments are constantly changing after the first 3 chorus repeats, it builds and climaxes and ends, job done. I think if Flat Beat had added something more, a bridge, done a Tubular Bells with extra sounds, changed it up, I would have enjoyed it more than I did. As I say, though, it still seems pretty popular with the 90’s generation who see it as a plus, especially those that enjoy very long repetitive dance or Indie tracks!