Here we, here we, here we fucking go!
Heaven, by DJ Sammy & Yanou ft. Do (their 1st and only #1s)
1 week, 3rd – 10th November 2002
That’s the sort of thing people used to shout when the beat dropped on this next number one, in the cheap nightclubs I was frequenting in 2002, where they didn’t check IDs and the carpet oozed decades’ worth of alcohol onto your shiny school shoes (no trainers allowed – they did have some standards).
This is cheap and nasty trance pop. Ned music, if you’re from where I’m from. Faceless Euro DJs with sledgehammer originals, and remixes of old hits. Think Ultrabeat, Basshunter, Cascada and, daddies of them all, SCOOOOO-TER! They did the job, when you were young and off your face on Smirnoff Ice, but for dance music in general I’d say it was a step backwards.
Compare this to the Eurodance of a couple years earlier: Fragma, Modjo, ATB. Their offerings were a lot subtler, a bit more thoughtful. For much of the 2010s though, as far as I could tell, most dance tunes sounded like DJ Sammy. And one on hand I do like the heavy, deliberate beats that trance gives you. It lends itself to lasers and dry ice, and listening to this now I am starting to get slightly nostalgic. But it also gets repetitive.
‘Heaven’ was originally a hit for Bryan Adams in 1985, when it had given him his first US #1 (and had made #38 in the UK). It provided a similar breakthrough for DJ Sammy, a Spaniard who had been active since the mid-90s. His version of ‘Heaven’ also impressively made the Billboard Top 10, a chart usually immune to the charms of European dance music. Sammy had further success with versions of Don Henley’s ‘Boys of Summer’ and Annie Lennox’s ‘Why’, and he continues to record and to DJ.
The credits for this song feel very 21st century. Imagine telling someone in 1952 that fifty years later number one hits would be recorded by acts named DJ Sammy & Yanou ft. Do. Yanou was the German producer who collaborated on this track, and Do a Dutch singer who provided the vocals. Neither have troubled the UK charts again, though Do was fairly successful in her homeland and Yanou went on to work extensively with the aforementioned Cascada.
Another thing I remember about this song was the very popular ‘candlelight mix’: a stripped back, piano version without the thumping beat, which probably soundtracked many a teenage fumble among my schoolfriends. Like I said, listening to this now is making me slightly nostalgic. I have to remind myself that I thought this was crap at the time, and that it’s still fairly crap now. But therein lies the pernicious danger of nostalgia, making even the bad, the cheap, and the tacky, appear good.
The UK Number Ones Blog 
Yeah, I know this version quite well. It was a #4 hit in Australia. My local kebab store plays 90s and 2000s Eurodance videos and this is one of the videos/songs I hear on frequent rotation. The original is one of the more tolerable Bryan Adams songs and I really enjoy the original, and this one maybe hot take is equally as good. Maybe because the female vocals are more tolerable than Bryan Adams. And yeah, wow, I didn’t realise until you pointed out how many 2010s EDM/electronic songs would crib from this type of sound.
I feel a kebab shop is the perfect environment for a song like this…
On the one hand I was annoyed Heaven wasnt a big UK hit for Bryan Adams, on the other hand at least the song got there eventually. Other than that though, I’m pretty much in agreement for the big trashy acts you mention. As I’m not looking back with nostalgia at my teens (thats the 70’s) and I was clubbing in the 2000’s, it’s too recent for me to feel any fondness for the lesser dance tunes, though a lot of folk of a certain age definitely do these days! Me, I’ll stick with Shakedown’s At Night, Kylie, Murder On The Dancefloor, Crying At The Discotheque and many others – those were the ones I was big on and they seem to still be well regarded, hooray!